PEOPLE'S COLLEGE: 



Eev. J^&J^ T). SlSdCITH, D. D. 

7 



Rev. IVI^RK HOI^KINS, D. D., 



Hon. H. aREELEY, 



AND OTHERS; 



CORRESPONDENCE. 







NEW YORK: 

WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK <fe THOMAS, PRINTERS, 

No. 113 Fulton Street. 

1859. 



y 



^■^3/ A 



A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE PLANS AND PURPOSES 
OF THE COLLEGE. 



The present age has been preeminently pi'oductive of striking 
results, and its spirit has been displayed in almost numberless 
variety of forms to the high admiration of the civilized world. 
Valleys have been raised, mountains leveled, cleft, or tunneled, 
highways constructed, and machinery so applied and propelled, 
that velocity has virtually contracted greatly both space and time, 
and has made travel, which was once so difficult and wearisome, 
only pastime. The winds and the Avaters have been brought into 
new relations, and so made to perform in almost all the departments 
of labor, with exactitude and dispatch, what before had been 
thought to be impossibilities. The lightning has been sent obedi- 
ently along a net- work of wires to distant places, enabling us to 
converse, as if face to fece, friend with friend, in any part of the 
land ; and what is still more gratifying, and a ground of higher ad- 
miration is, that the present age has been productive of a more full 
and complete knowledge of the human mind, its necessities, and the 
best methods of supplying them. 

The mind is immortal, but the material substance is perishable ; 
the one is the subject of enjoyment, the other a condition of it only ; 
the one is the mistress, the other her servant ; the one a cause, self- 
moving, self-controlling, the source of beauty, truth, justice, and 
goodness ; the other an effect only. Understanding is a well-spring 
of life, the foundation and frame-work of civilized society. 

*' The good we do men, however great, is ever transient ; the 
truths Ave leave them, are eternal." 

Nor is this conviction limited and casual, but constant and preva- 
lent. The fathers of this country possessed it, as evinced by their 
early efforts to found, at great sacrifice of labor and property. Har- 
vard College ; by the common-school system, whose origin was 
coeval nearly with that of the Plymouth and the Massachusetts 
colonies ; it has descended to our own times, as is manifest by the 
profound interest which has, within the last quarter of a century, 
pervaded so many of the States of this confederacy, on the subject 
of education. 



And, if we take counsel of the imagination, will not the same con- 
clusion be forced upon us? Fulton, who first applied steam to navi- 
gation ; Franklin, who first drew lightning from the clouds ; and 
Morse, who has taught how, through its intervention, thought can 
make itself known at almost incalculable distances, have all so iden- 
tified their names with their works, that they wiU be remembered 
and respected, while language lasts. 

But as the generations go by, shall not the names of those men 
who have taught how the mind may be perfected, and have gener- 
ously supplied the means of its accomplishment, shine with a more 
eminent lustre *? The love of humanity holds an exalted rank 
among our active powers ; those by consequence, who interest them- 
selves most in what most redounds to the welfare of the race, 
making the greatest sacrifices for it, shall be most esteemed. 

To educate is the highest of earthly employments, whether 
regarded in its effects upon mind itself, or in the beneficial results to 
foUow from its increased grasp and energy. 

We call this Institution the People's College, intending that the 
name shall indicate something of its purpose. The use of the word 
People's in this connection, has a particular significance. Not, 
however, that any engaged in erecting the College, would intimate 
that the highest authority known to the world resides in the people — 
that wisdom, power, and justice have their root and spring from 
them, and that other dependence is to be discarded : nor that any, 
so engaged, believe that the people, distinguishing the many from 
the few, the unlearned from the learned, best know their mental 
wants, and have the most skill to supply them : nor again, that 
humanity has so declined in the bosoms of the cultivated portions 
of men, that they are prepared to mock at or neglect altogether the 
wants of their less fortunate fellow-citizens : nor again, that any 
would bring down the standard of education in this country to 
a lower level than that to which it has attained. The name, as 
used by the founders of the CoUege, intends nothing boastful or re- 
proachful ; it is meant to suggest only, what most reflecting persons 
concede, that some modification of the prevailing systems of college 
education in this country, is demanded to enable them better to sub- 
serve the wants of the people. The title is intended to be signifi- 
cant, 1st, because it is expected that the College will, on pecuniary 



grounds, be more easily accessible to young persons seeking an edu- 
cation, than most institutions of similar grade ; and 2d, because 
while the discipline of the mind, and instruction in the, sciences and 
letters will be here properly cared for, the application of the sciences 
to the arts will be particularly attended to ; thus making the Col- 
lege both a disciplinary and professional institution. 

This College was chartered by the Legislature of New York, in 
April, 1853, and there were conferred upon it the immunities and 
privileges common to the colleges of the country. It is provided, 
however, in the charter, that the diplomas or honoraiy testimonials 
conferi'ed on students, shall expressly specify the branches which the 
student has mastered, and those only. 

The capital stock of the College may consist of $500,000, and be 
increased to 81,000,000. 

The Institution was founded to promote literature, science, arts, 
and agi'iculture. Accordingly, it is to be, first, eminently educa- 
tional ; as it must be, or foil to answer the ends of its existence. 
Mental, no less than bodily growth and perfection, result from ac- 
tivity : it should be added, from that which is definite and system- 
atic, and not from that which is fitful or misapplied. Education 
is the profoundest of sciences. Hence the People's College has, and 
must have, an end in common with all co-ordinate seminaries of 
learning, to be attained by substantially the same means ; by means, 
that is, which are conformable to man's nature and relations. 
Man, now, is a complex being, not only as composed of body and 
mind — the mind is diverse in character. It is made up of groujis of 
faculties, which we denominate intellect, sensitivity, and will. The 
means must therefore be definite, as answering to the law of habit, 
and diverse as answering to the diversified nature of the mind. 

To give it consistency in its enlargement, the mind must be edu- 
cated with respect to its powers of perception, conception, attention, 
memory, judgment, reason, and imagination ; the emotions of beauty, 
reverence, adoration, and hope ; the social, moral, and religious af- 
fections, the conscience and the will. By every method suggested 
by the judgment, experience, and revelation, man must be put into 
harmony with himself, the material and the sensible worlds around 
him, and with his God. 

In the People's College are to be taught for the sake of discipline, 



6 

pure and mixed Mathematics, the Ancient and the Modern Lan- 
guages, History, Geography, Esthetics, Mental and Moral Philoso- 
phy, and the revelations of the Bible. 

Our possessions are chiefly the eiFects of industry. The gifts of 
Providence are mostly the rewards of fidelity. 

In recognition of these facts, the Trustees design, in the second 
place, to qualify their gi'aduates for the efficient discharge of the 
practical duties of life, and to provide the means of elevating labor. 
And this is, more than any other, to be the distinguishing feature 
of this College ; to lighten burdens by increasing the ability to bear 
them, and to remove oppression by removing the motives to it. 

Hence, in the by-laws of the seminary, these are declared to be 
objects of its overseers. 1. To so arrange the exercises of students 
as to qualify them upon graduation to enter at once upon the busi- 
ness of their choice, by giving not only a theoretic, but a fuU, 
systematic, practical course of instruction, illustrative of the prin- 
ciples and laws upon which their business is based and should be 
conducted. 

2. To elevate labor, by requiring each student to work upon the 
farm, or in the shop, a portion of each of five days in a week. 

3. To afford adults opportunities of pursuing any favorite branch 
of study. 

Tn subservience to these designs, students are to be required to 
master text-books on G-eology, Botany, Chemistry, Entomology, 
Anatomy, Physiology, and the Natural Sciences generally ; on 
Ai'chitecture, Engineering, Bridging, Eoad-making, Agriculture, 
Gardening, &c. 

Courses of lectures are to be given, which not only the inmates 
of the College may attend, but the ftirmer, mechanic, or day-laborer 
also, defraying the expense of such attendance, if he choose, by 
working upon the farm or in the shops. 

4. The farm and work-shops are to be models of imitation ; to the 
end, that visitors from a distance, as well as the inhabitants of the 
surrounding country, may receive useful hints in respect to their 
various avocations. 

5. It is intended, also, that here may be seen and procured the 
finest specimens of mechanism, the choicest varieties of fruits, grapes, 



roots, &c., ndfipted to this climate, with the information essential to 
their culture ; the best machines and implements adapted to mechan- 
ical and agricultural industry, with a full and particular description 
of their uses. 

The College farm, which consists of two hundred acres of land 
of diversified soil, has been secured to the College by deed, and 
shops with their implements are soon to be provided, agreeably to 
the requirements of the Charter. Curricula of study have not 
been yet fully prepared. At a recent meeting of the Board, the fol- 
lowing resolutions were, however, adopted : 

1. That, until otherwise ordered, the Trustees of this College 
wiU endeavor to endow or otherwise provide for the maintenance 
of the following named Professorships in this Institution, viz. : 

1st, A Professorship of Natural and Revealed Theology. 

2d, Of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. 

3d, Of Jurisprudence and Political Economy. 

4th, Of Logic, and the Science and Art of Instruction. 

5 th, Of Ancient and Modern History. 

Gth, Of English Literature, Rhetoric, and Oratory. 

7th, Of Taste as applied to the Arts, and of the History of the 
Arts. 

8th, Of Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, and Veterinary. 

9th, Of Natural Histoiy, comprising Zoology, Ichthyology, and 
Entomology. 

10th, Of Chemistry, Botany, and Mineralogy. 

11th, Of Agricultural Chemistry, and Chemistry as applied to 
the Arts, and Geology. 

12th, Of Practical Agriculture. 

13th, Of Horticulture. 

14th, Of Mathematics, and Natural Philosophy. 

15 th, Of the Application of the Sciences to the Arts, comprising 
Architecture, Engineering, &c. 

16th, Of Geogi-aphy, Meteorology, and Astronomy. 

17th, Of the Latin and Greek Languages. 

18th, Of the Modern Languages. 

19th, Principal of the Preparatory Department. 

2. That there shall be established three Courses of Study in this 
College, which shall be severally denominated Classical, Scientific, 



8 

and Provisional or Select ; and for admission to the Classical de- 
partment, students sliall be required to sustain an examination in 
such studies as are now required to be pursued in order to ad- 
mission to the other Colleges of the State. Students designing to 
pursue the Scientific Course of Study, shall be required to sustain 
an examination in English Grammar, Geography, Arithmetic, and 
Algebra, through Simple Equations. For admission to the Provi- 
sional or Select Course of Study, no more shall be required, than 
that the student shall have capacity and culture sufficient to enable 
him to pursue with profit to himself, and without hindrance to 
others, the branch or branches of study of his choice. 

The length of the College Course to be pursued in the Classical 
and Scientific Departments, to entitle students in one case to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in the other to that of Bachelor of 
Science, shall be four years. Students, however, who may enter 
the College with the intention of pursuing a select course of study, 
shall, at the close of their coiu'se, be entitled to an examination in 
the branches pursued by them, and, if meritorious, to a certificate 
or diploma, carefully written and signed by the President of the 
College, and such other persons as may be hereafter designated, 
which shall expressly specify the branches pursued by them. 

More recently, it has been established, that at an early day, a 
Preparatoiy Department shall be opened, to be connected with the 
College, to which the privileges of labor, so far as practicable, shall 
be extended ; and that earnest efforts shall be made to keep the 
expenses of students at this College, including Tuition, Board, and 
Koom-rent, as low as ^120 per annum. Each student will be 
allowed the avails of his labor, and, if so disposed, to apply them to 
the reduction of his expenses. 

The College year will be divided into two terms of twenty weeks 
each, with two vacations of six weeks each, beginning, severally, 
about the twentieth of January and of July. 

The first College term will commence, it is expected, during the 
first week of September, 1860. 

The question, whether the moral and physical well-being of stu- 
dents would be best promoted by the adoption of the German 
method of permitting them to find their homes, as they might, in 
the various families of the neighborhood of the College, or by re- 



9 

quiring tliem to live nt the Institution, has been agitated, and opin- 
ions regarding it are still divided. 

But the presumption is strong, that a College of this character 
could not be successfully conducted on the German method. The 
routine of exercises, to avoid confusion and waste, must, it is mani- 
fest, be here performed with something of a military precision ; and 
government, while it is conciliatory and kind, must be authoritative 
and pervading. The evils, therefore, resulting from association, 
must, it is believed, be here prevented by an increased cultivation 
of the social powers, by systematic labor, and by care. 

The work on the College edifice was begun on the 8th day of 
September, 1857; and the main edifice, which is 216 feet long, and 
a centre projection rearward, designed for the chapel and dining- 
room, are now ready for roofing. The work already done on these 
buildings has cost about 130,000. 

The foundations of the outside walls, made of large, flat stones, 
weighing, some of them, from four to five tons each, embedded 
firmly in hydraulic cement, vary in width from nine to twelve feet, 
and are, on the average, three and a half feet deep. The basement 
walls are two feet thick and ten feet high, substantially made of 
the best quality of stone. The brick walls are sixteen inches thick, 
and rise to the height of more than seventy feet above the water-table. 
The building, when finished, will be three hundred and twenty feet 
long, fifty-two feet wide, and four stories high, above the basement. 
The wings, at either end, will be two hundred and six feet long, 
and of the same width and height as the main building ; and the 
centre projection is seventy feet long by sixty-four feet wide. 
A cupola of octagonal form, thirty-six feet in diameter, and extend- 
ing upwards fifty feet from the apex of the roof, is to surmount the 
building, and a cupola is to be placed on each of the end wings. 

The house is to be arranged for a chapel of a size to seat 1300 
persons, for ten lecture-rooms, forty-seven rooms for the President, 
Professors, Secretary, and Treasurer, and two hundred and twenty 
chambers for students, each to accommodate two persons. It will 
also contain a culinary department, and suitable rooms for the 
steward. It will be thoroughly ventilated into the chimneys, and 
heated by furnaces. Its estimated cost is $175,000. 



10 

In respect, now, to the importance of this College enterprise, 
there will not, probably, be much diiFerence of opinion. The wis- 
dom of the means by which it is proposed to achieve the undertak- 
ing, must be left, in some measure, to the test of experience. They 
will be criticised, and the friends of the Institution have the right 
only to insist that the subject be candidly canvassed. 

How are the fmids for the accomplishment of so vast a work to 
be obtained, it is not here in place to inquire. But there are 
grounds to believe that the enterprise will not fail for the lack of 
funds to sustain it. 

" And Isaac spake unto Abraham, his father," as they went on 
together through the wilderness of Sinai, we read, " and said, My 
father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a 
burnt offering ? And Abraham said. My son, God will provide 
himself a lamb for a burnt offering." 

Having begun this labor for the glory of Abraham's God, in the 
elevation and happiness of the human family, we may sm'ely rely 
on his providence for the means of its successful accomplishment. 

Almost on the very spot which constitutes the site of this CoUege 
edifice, bvit a little more than half a century ago, the famous Indian 
Queen, Catharine Montour, had her wigwam, and was waited on 
by her savage attendants ; barbarism and rudeness reigned through- 
out this wide, beautiful region of country, the monuments of which 
may still be seen. To fulfiU some grand design, God has caused the 
change to take place, which we are permitted to witness ; the wil- 
derness and the solitary place to blossom as the rose. And can 
this be less than an earnest of the same Divine Power, still work- 
ing in this laind, of his beneficent regards to the attainment of a 
purpose of a similar character, more grand and glorious "? Is it not 
history from which faith may derive support ? 

Unless the Lord buUd the house, they labor in vain that build it. 
But what people could ever say, as we can, " The Lord has been 
mindful of us" "? How few reaUy worthy schemes have failed, in 
this country, for the lack of funds to sustain them ! • 

"We assume, that this enterprise was commenced by Divine inter- 
position, and that, if so begun, it is sure to be completed. Tlae 



11 

College has friends devoted to it, in all parts of the State, and be- 
yond it.* 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE COLLEGE, 
AND A LIST OF GENTLEMEN COIMPOSING THE 
BOARD. 

Hesolved, That a committee of three persons be appointed, whose 
duty it shall be to ascertain if some suitable persons can be found 
to take charge of and conduct on suitable terms the Mechanical 
Department, which may be connected with this College ; to ascer- 
tain, also, from such persons, if found, what price, per hour, may 
be safely paid to students contracting to labor for them ; on the 
supposition that students are to labor no more than four hours in 
one day and five days only in a week, and that the value of their 
labor is to increase with their progress in the art in which they 
may each engage ; and report to the Board. 

Resolved, That Mechanics, Artisans, and other individuals be 
respectfully requested to contribute to the People's College such 
models of machines and apparatus as they have in their possession 
(the Trustees pledging themselves to furnish a room at once, to be 
kept open to the public, suitable to protect such bequests, and to 
bring them into general notice), and that authors of books, public 
officers, and private individuals, be also respectfully requested to 
contribute to the library of the College such books as it may be 
convenient for them to do, and which may be of use to the Institu- 
tion. 

Resolved, That the Library of this College shall be kept in a 
room built for the purpose, to contain 32 alcoves at least, for books, 
and that every person contributing $1000 to be expended for the 



*Oii the 8th of September, 1S59, the following letter was addressed to the Hod. 
Charles Cook : 

" Dear Sik — I have a client who is about to make his will, and who desires to be- 
queath something to the People's College ; having a good opinion of that institution. 

" Will you forward to me, by return mail, this week if possible, the proper form of a be- 
quest to that Institution, so that there may be no failure of the bequest by reason of its 
not being properly specified in the will ? Tours, &c., .'' 

It is also proper to add, that several gentlemen of extensive wealth, in the State, have 
given encouragement to the Trustees, that they will each contribute, as they Lave been 
prospered, to promote this great undertaking. 



12 

purchase of books, maps, or cliarts, for said College, shall have his 
name inscribed within or over the entrance to some one of said 
alcoves. 

Resolved, That whenever any person shall contribute the simi of 
$20,000 to establish a Professorship in this College, the Professor- 
ship so established shall be forever thereafter called by the name of 
the donor, or of some person designated by himself. 

1. The Trustees shall hold meetings on the second Wednesday 
of November, February, May, and August, at ten o'clock a.m., at 
such place as a quorum of the Board may direct. 

2. The Treasurer of the College shall give good and sufficient 
bonds for the faithful performance of his duties. 

The Trustees are : 

Ajmos Broavk, President of the College. 
Edwin D. Morgan, Governor of the State. 
Egbert Campbell, Lt. Governor of the State. 
Dewitt C. Littlejohn, Speaker of the Assembly. 
Henry Van Dyke, Superintendent of Public Instruction. 



•S 



Horace Greeley New York 

Daniel S. Dickinson Broome. 

Washington Hunt , . <, Niagara. 

Eoswell Holden Schujrler. 

D. C. McGallum New York. 

A. I. Wynkoop Chemung. 

W. H. Banks. 

C. J. Chatfield Steuben. 

John Magee " 

S. Robertson Tompkins. 

Geo. J. Pumpelly Tioga. 

David Eees " 

Charles Lee , T'ates. 

T. E. Morgan , Broome. 

K C. Frost Schuyler. 

Charles Cook . . .t " 

W. T. Laavrence " 



13 

Enwm B. Morgan Cayuga. 

TiiURL0A7 Weed Albany. 

Constant Cook Steuben. 

Erastus Brooks New York. 

Asa D. Smith, D.D " 

Joseph Carson Schuyler. 

John Rose Yates. 

OFFICERS. 

Rev. Amos Brown, LL.D., President. 
Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, LL.D., Chairman of the Board. 
Hon. William T. Lawrence, Vice-Chairman. 
Hon. Charles Cook, Havana, Secretary. 
T. L. MiNiER, Esq., Havana, Treasurer. 
Rev. S. Mills Day, A.M., Havana, Librarian. 
Executive Committee — Hon. Charles Cook, Hon. William T. 
Lawrence, Col. E. C. Frost, A. L Wynkoop, Esq., W. H. Banks, 
Esq. 

Committee of Finance — Hon. D. Rees, Col. Charles Lee, Ros- 
well Holden, Esq. 

Building Committee — Hon. Charles Cook, Hon. D. C. McCal- 
LUM, Col. E. C. Frost, Col. Charles Lee, A. L Wynkoop, Esq. 
Architect — S. B. Elliott, Esq. 

At a meeting of the Trustees, May 10th, 1859, Rev. F. G. Hib- 
BARD, D.D., editor of the Northern Christian Advocate, was ap- 
pointed to the Professorship of Natural and Revealed Theology in 
the College. 

At a meeting, August 24th, 1859, Prof. Wm. H. Brewer, of 
Washington College, Pa., was elected Professor of Chemistry, Bo- 
tany, and Mineralogy, and Prof. Wm. AV. Folwell, of Hobart Free 
College, Professor of the Latin and Greek Languages. 



14 



[portions of the charter of the college.] 



BY THE REGMTS OF THE UIIYERSITY 

OF THE 

STATE OF NEW YORK. 



Whereas, the Trustees of "The People's College," 
an Institution chartered by the Legislature of the State of New 
York, on the twelfth day of April, 1853, and made subject to the 
visitation of the Regents of the University of the said State, by an 
Act of the said Legislature, passed on the twenty-fifth day of 
March, 1859, have made application to the said Regents for certain 
amendments. to their said Charter ; and public notice of the said ap- 
plication having been given to the satisfaction of the said Regents, 
and no objections having been made thereto, and the said Regents 
having considered the said application, and being of the opinion 
that sufficient cause has been shown for amending the said Charter 
as hereinafter provided for, do hereby, in virtue of the authority in 
them by law vested, grant, ordain, determine, and declare that the 
Charter of the said " The People's College," be, and the same 
is hereby amended as follows : 

Section 1. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of this 
State, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, and the Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction shall severally (in addition to the 
President of the said College, as abeady provided for) be ex officio 
members of the Board of Trustees of the said CoUege. There 
shall be twenty-four Trustees of the said College, exclusive of the 
eo: officio Trustees ; and the present Board of Trustees, with the ex 
officio Trustees above named, shaU continue to be the Trustees of 
the said College without any further election. The said Board of 
Trustees and their successors are authorized to fill all vacancies 
which may from time to time occur in their number, by death, re- 
signation, or otherwise. 



15 

Sectiox 2. The fourth section* of the said charter is hereby 
amended by adding thereto as follows : " Nor shall any real estate 
of the College be leased for a term exceeding three years, nor shall 
any by-laws of the Board of Trustees be repealed or amended, or 
any new by-law be adopted unless by the same vote." 

Section 3. There shall be an annual meeting of the said Trus- 
tees, at the College, at such time as they may by their standing by- 
laws prescribe ; on which day, the persons who have contributed to 
the funds of the said College, and who are designated in the said 
Charter as stockholders, and who hold, or are entitled to certificates 
of the character hereinafter mentioned, may also hold a meeting at 
the said College, and appoint a committee of their number, not ex- 
ceeding five, who shall have power to examine into the condition of 
the said College, its course of instruction, its finances, and all other 
jnatters pertaining to its welfare, and to report on the same to the 
Trustees, with any recommendations they may deem proper. A 
copy of every such report shall be transmitted by the Trustees to 
the Regents of the University with their annual report to the Re- 
gents, and the said Trustees shall state what action, if any, has been 
had on the said report, and in case they have declined to adopt the 
recommendations thereof, either wholly or in part, they shall state 
their reasons for so doing. 

Section 4. The capital stock of the said corporation, as estab- 
lished by the sixth section of the Charter, shall hereafter be divided 
into shares of fifty dollars each : and every person who shall here- 
tofore have contributed, or who may hereafter contribute at least 
that amount to the funds of the Institution, shall be entitled to re- 
ceive a certificate therefor, in substantially the following form : 

STATE OF NEW YORK : 

It is hereby certified that A B has contributed dollars 

to the funds of " The People's College," an institution chartered 
by the Legislature of the State of New York, on the twelfth day 
of April, 1853 ; in virtue of which contribution the said A B has 
become a stockholder in the said Institution to that amount, repre- 

*|4. The said Board of Trustees shall appoint the President, Professors, and such 
other officers and instructors as they deem necessary; but no President, Professor, or 
other officer of the College shall be appointed or removed, and no real estate bought or 
sold, except by a vote of two thirds of the members of the Board. 



16 

sentlng shares of fifty dollars each, which will entitle the 

said stockholder to one vote on each of the said shares actually 
held by him, at all meetings of the said stockholders. The said 
stock is transferable on the books of the said corporation in such 
manner as may be provided by its by-laws. 

In ivitness whereof, the President and Treasurer (or other proper 
officers) of the said College, have hereunto subscribed their names 
this day of — . 

No person, unless he holds or is entitled to a certificate of the 
character aforesaid, shall be entitled to vote at the annual meeting 
of the contributors hereinbefore provided for ; and every person 
shall be entitled at any such meeting to one vote for every fifty dol- 
lars contributed by him. The four ex officio Trustees hereinbefore 
appointed, shall be the representatives of all persons who have con- 
tributed to the said College smaller amounts than fifty dollars each : 
and they, or any or either of them, may attend any such meeting as 
aforesaid, and vote on the aggregate contributions to the said Col- 
lege of less than fifty dollars, each in like manner as other contribut- 
ors. The said Trustees may accept contributions to the said Col- 
lege to an amount not exceeding One Million of dollars in the aggre- 
gate, to be considered as stock under the Charter as aforesaid, and 
for which certificates may be issued of the form above provided 
for. 

Section 5. The said Trustees may organize the said College,- 
and establish a course of instruction therein, as soon as they shall 
deem the same advisable, and may also make such by-laws as they 
shall deem proper in relation to the management of the said Institu- 
tion, and the course of instruction therein, in the several particulars 
specified in the eighth section of the Charter, and particularly as to 
the persons who shall actually perform labor in some branch of pro- 
ductive industry, and the time they shall so labor, and the terms on 
which students shall be permitted to graduate ; provided such by- 
laws be not inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the 
charter, as to which the said Regents may determine, should any 
question arise in regard thereto. The fourth subdivision of the said 
eighth section of the Charter, is hereby repealed. 

Section 6. The Regents may at any time, alter, amend, or re- 
peal this ordinance. 



17 

In witness whereof the said Regents have caused their common 
seal to be hereto affixed, and their Chancellor and Secretary have 
hereunto subscribed their names, this twenty-seventh day of July, in 
the year one thousand eight hundred andi Jlfty-nine. 

G. T. LANSmG, Chancellor. 

[L. S.] 

S. B. WoOLWORTH, Secretary. 



After the conclusion of the celebration on Wednesday, the 10th 
of August, last, the stockholders of the College met at the Court 
House, in Havana, and appointed a Committee to examine into the 
jfinancial condition of the College, its receipts and expenditures, &c., 
agreeably to the requirements of the foregoing Charter, and to re- 
port to the Board of Trustees. 

The Committee consists of A. G. Campbell, T. C. Broderick, 
Phineas Catlin, John Crawford, and Madison Tremain, Esqs. 



18 



ADDRESS 

Delivered at the College on the 10th op August, 1859, the Anniversary 
OF THE Trustees, by 

Rev. Asa D. Smith, D.D., 

OW ISTEAV^ YORK. 



As the eye of the thoughtful observer glances over both creation 
and Providence, it meets everywhere two diverse yet closely con- 
nected aspects. The first is that of permanency. It is an old 
universe that stretches about us. The same sun cometh forth from 
his gorgeous pavilion, that poured his radiance around the royal 
Psalmist. The same moon walketh in her brightness, on which 
looked of old the man of Uz. The same starry host glitters in the con- 
cave above us, on which, from the door of his tent, the patriarch 
Abraham gazed. The ancient mountains tower still toward the hea- 
vens. The rivers of the olden time still make their way to the ocean. 
Nay, the man of the early ages, is the very man that stands before 
us now. He has the same " human face divine," the same curious 
mechanism of intellect. The same heart beats in his bosom ; the same 
conscience pleads for God and righteousness. His lot, too, is that of 
the years before the flood. Infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, 
walk still the old round. There are the same natal and nuptial 
joys, the same triumphs of peace and of war ; the same adversities 
and disappointments, at home and abroad ; the same pangs of be- 
reavement, and the same agonies of the final hour. Human society 
has, in all essential features, its old type. There are still poverty 
and affluence, subjection and authority ; the old correlations and 
antagonisms, not of the individual merely, but of families and 
nations. The conclusion of the wise man, thousands of years ago, 
is the very conclusion to which we come : " The thing which hath 
been is that which shaU be ; and that which is done is that which 
shall be done ; and there is no new thing under the sun." 

Yet as this aspect of permanency meets us, there comes with it, 
evermore, an aspect of change. The material creation is — to the 
untutored eye in part, and still more to the philosophic ken — in a 
state of perpetual flux. Bright stars have faded from the heavens ; 
even the sun is moving ever along a mystic track, and spots come 



19 

and go on its disc. Of the earth on which we dwell, not a clod but 
is ever changing, not a river or a sea but has its shifting sands and 
shores ; not a mountain but has its attritions — of ordinary gravita- 
tion, of the winds and the rains, or of the glacier and the avalanche. 
The coral formations, the geological depositions, and the volcanic 
upheavals are ever going forward ; so that it is no wild dream to 
look, even in a naturalistic view, for "a new earth." Not a living 
thing in field or forest but has its transitional aspects, its perpetual 
mutation. Not a human being, whose frame or whose intellect ig 
to-day what it was yesterday. So numerous are the ever occurring 
transformations, that no question has more racked the brains of meta- 
physic men, than that old one of identity. The life of the family 
is like that of the individual, but a series of vicissitudes. So of the 
state, and so of that congeries of states by which the whole broad 
earth is possessed. In external condition, in tastes and opinions, 
in customs and manners, in governmental forms and fortunes, what 
a succession of changes has the whole history of our race presented. 
A fixture the Providence of God is, in one point of view, but in an- 
other, a never ceasing and ever varying current. 

One of the chief marvels connected with this combination of the 
permanent and the transient, is the divine felicity with which 
they are woven together. A world ever old, and yet ever new ; a 
Providence ever settled, and yet ever varying — this was the problem 
which the Great Master proposed to himself. With no startling 
abruptness, jio revolting jar, are his transitions made. With a 
pleasing gradualism is the mountain shaded off into the valley. 
Imperceptibly almost, widens the rivulet into the river. Gently 
brightens the first blush of dawn into the fuUness of day. Like the 
light crystals of winter, that come upon us with a touch as of down, 
so softly fall on man the snows of time. " Gray hairs are here and 
there upon him, yet he knoweth not." With a quiet lapse, customs 
and dogmas come and go ; families change, and at length melt 
away ; dynasties and empires rise, decline, and pass out of being. 
As when we look on a series of dissolving views, and behold muta- 
tion after mutation come over the same edifice or the same land- 
scape, yet all with the most perfect stillness, and with not the 
slightest balk or confusion ; so is it, though after a grander and 
more perfect manner, in the glorious spectacle of the Divine Provi- 



20 

dence. In God's hand, there is no real conflict of the old with the 
new ; there is no undue preference of the one to the other. They 
are in just the right relative proportion ; there are harmonies per- 
fect and exquisite between them. It is an old loom, but God can 
adjust a new web to it ; it was framed with that design. It is an 
old warp, and the woof may have taken many a familiar figure 
already; but the swift-flying shuttle can inweave, without detri- 
ment, new figures — figures which shall seem, in the issue, the indis- 
pensable complement of the old. 

Nor is this particular method of God's working to be regarded 
merely as an object of reverential and devout contemplation. 
Eightly apprehended, it suggests to us a lesson of practical vnsdom — 
a lesson which will be found, we think, quite germane to the 
present occasion. His ways are, indeed, above our ways ; yet, in 
their leading characteristics, they are ever an ensample for lis. The 
orbs of the heavens above are made to be imaged, though it be dimly, 
on the depths below. As the Providence that is over us has to do 
both with the old and the new, so have we under that Providence. 
And in our treatment of these two great elements of our being and 
destiny, we are to copy, as we may, the Divine wisdom. For the 
careful and discriminating study of this perfect model, there is a 
cogent argument in the very limitation of our powers. "We cannot 
see, as God does, the end from the beginning. Our minds have but 
narrow scope, and are liable hence to one-sided and partial views. 
So is it in all directions, but especially in that now indicated. 
Under the influence of peculiarities of temperament, association, 
and habitude, we are ever in danger of hurtful extremes, of either 
unduly exalting the old, or improperly magnifying the new. 

To this latter peril, we of this new world, especially the more 
ardent and impulsive among us, are peculiarly exposed. It lies in 
our very origin as a people. It was from old evils, from hoary 
errors, abuses, and oppressions, our fathers fled, that in the depths 
of the forest's gloom, they might, under God, " make all things 
new." Blended ties of memory, love, and loyalty, did, indeed, 
bind them, for a time, to their fatherland. But of these, the first 
and the second were soon weakened, and the last was at length 
violently sundered. They were alone then — cut ofi^, as it were, 
from all the world. They were beginners — they were layers of 



21 

foundations. For tliemselves they must think, and for themselves 
they must act. Long before the declaration of political independ- 
ence, indeed, that of mental independence Avas fearlessly made. 
Never since the world, began, have there been sturdier or bolder 
thinkers than our Puritan fathers. Before a " Thus saith the Lord," 
they "behaved and quieted" themselves " as a weaned child;" but 
other dictation or supreme authority, in all the universe they 
acknowledged none. If in the base or superstructure of the edifice 
they were rearing, a stone was laid, here and there, from the 
quarries or the fabrics of the old world, it was taken mainly because 
of its intrinsic fitness, and not merely because of its origin or associa- 
tions. Possibly in some points they carried matters too far ; it 
were but human to do so. Much more likely is such excess in us, 
who, if we inherit their spirit of self-reliance, have fallen off some- 
what, it is to be feared, from their sober wisdom and stern integri- 
ty. National growth has nourished national pride ; a spirit, both 
in the nation and the individual, eminently unfavorable to the 
power of precedent. From the models of other lands we are, in 
some respects, farther removed than even our Roundhead ancestors ; 
and we have as yet no antiquities of our own, either to charm or 
to command us. Virgin fields still stretch around us ; and forests, 
ancient indeed, but which speak to us rather of things new than 
old. We are still in the process of sowing, planting, and founding. 
With a self-confidence strong enough already, yet waxing rather 
than waning; bound by no venerable memories, held fast by no au- 
thoritative traditions ; it is no marvel if we pass at times, in our 
devotion to the new, to ridiculous extremes ; it is no wonder if in 
regard to the fairest and most precious forms of antiquity, we enact 
the part of the uncompromising iconoclast. And this tendency is 
all the greater from the general characteristics of the times on 
which we have fallen ; from the world-wide agitation of mind, the 
unparalleled scrutinies which are everywhere going forward, and 
that spirit of progress which is encompassing the globe. Some 
there are among us who deem these, emphatically, the first times ; 
especially as they are passing majestically over our own glorious 
land. Other ages and other generations are much to them as if 
they had never been. " What to us," say they, " in the science of 
mind, in politics, in ethical lore, or in theology, are the dogmas of 



22 

other days 1 They were, to great extent, but the immaturities of 
childish thought. "We prove all things ; we speculate and conclude 
for ourselves. What to us are time-hallowed institutions ? This 
new era demands new instrumentalities and organisms, new cor- 
relations, channels, and motivities ; to the forming of which we 
confidently address ourselves. Away with the old, that the blended 
wisdom and might of ' Young America ' may give to the world her 
Eden again." 

While we deprecate such irreverent radicalism, hardly less to 
be deplored is the opposite extreme. In almost all mobility, there 
is something of promise ; in its wide scope may be found, at least, 
some possibilities of good. Hope was the fellow even of the stir- 
ring evils of Pandora's box. But what shall we say of that blind 
and stupid immobility, misnaming itself Conservatism, which 
broods over the great deep of human interests, not as did the 
Divine Spirit over the primal mass, to bring new creations of life, 
beauty, and glory out of it, but to keep the whole unchanged and 
stagnant 1 Some French wit has aptly represented it as, at the 
opening of the six days' process, imploring the Most High to con- 
serve old chaos! Some there are, even in this land of free 
thought, and these days of advancement, who see little good but in 
the times gone by. No rising sun do they worship, but rather, by 
faith, the suns that have set. The old opinions, the old styles of 
character, the old shaping of institutions — these are the objects of 
their veneration. The world seems to them in its decline — a 
thousand tokens of its dotage meet them on every hand. Their 
vaunted specimens of manhood are of the fossil order ; low esteem 
have they of all present excellency. To their distempered vision, 
quite reversing the old Scripture adage, a dead dog is better 
than a living lion. Morbidly fearful of all innovation are they — 
disposed to magnify the merest possibilities of evil. " Let us hold 
fast," they say, " to whatever of good is left us. Let us not put 
to hazard the little of our inheritance from the venerable past, 
which we have not as yet squandered. Let us have war to the 
knife with those insane radicals, who, under pretense of reform, 
would ' turn the world upside down.'" It is with our eye both 
on this extreme and its opposite, and with the hope of presenting, 
in its outline, a safer and better middle course — it is with reference, 



23 

also, to the somewhat unique educational enterprise, whose first 
anniversary has called us together — that we speak now of True Con- 
servatism, or the due correlation of the old and the neiv. 

In looking for the principles by which this correlation is to be 
determined, one of the first thoughts that occur to us, is of the 
intimate connection between all the past and all the present. "We 
may overlook or ignore it ; we may act as if it were but a fancy — 
men do often so act ; but it is still a fact, one of the clearest and 
most important, settled by God himself, and never disregarded by 
him. That linking of the old with the new, already adverted to, 
is not a merely mechanical or arbitrary adjustment ; it is dynamic 
and vital. The whole universe, as it stretches through all ages, 
however various, is yet, we doubt not, a glorious unity. Especially 
is this true of tliat system of things to which we belong. It is one 
vast organism — so even old Plato conceived it — its parts all mys- 
teriously and forcefully banded together ; its successive periods but 
periods, in a qualified sense, of growth or development. We say in 
a qualified sense, as eschewing the error of those who have deified 
the principle of development; who, in magnifying second causes, 
have virtually thrust out of his own universe the Great First Cause. 
We separate not God from his own laws; we preclude not his 
interposition, at whatever point his wisdom may select. We ad- 
mit, most readily, the origination, from period to period, of new 
series of causes — the interweaving of new cords or fibres with the 
manifold coil of Providence. What we assert is, that the universe, 
both in its extent and its duration, especially this little world of 
ours, is, in great degi'ce, a system of secondary causation — causa- 
tion ever connected with the throne of God, and in which, indeed, 
God is ever present. Human events are not as disconnected masses 
of dead matter; they are mainly as the links of an ever-lengthening 
chain ; or as the particles of the vine, rather, bound to each other, 
as it stretches along the treUis, by vital aflanities. We mean 
that event grows out of event, naturally and by settled laws, and 
clusters of events out of clusters of events, so that every age is linked 
not to the conterminous ages alone, but to all that have preceded it. 
We mean that, under God, — never excluding, but always including 
his presence — comprehending in our thought not only that imma- 
nent power which upholds all nature, but whatever touches of the 



24 

supernatural he lias seen fit to interpose — these, however, all har- 
monizing with the natural,— we mean, I say, that all by-gone his- 
tory is dynamically connected with all present and current history. 
"Well has Carlyle expressed it, in his own peculiar manner : " The 
leafy, blossoming present time springs from the whole past, remem- 
bered and unrememberable. * * You mil find fibrous roots of 
this day's occurrences among the dust of Cadmus and Trismegistus, 
of Tubal Cain and Triptolemus ; the tap-roots of them are with 
Father Adam himself, and the cinders of Eve's first fire." 

Now, from this view of history and its materials, so vmlike the 
almost mechanical view often presented, two practical inferences 
may be made. The first is, that it is the height of foUy and self- 
delusion to think any human interest in a perfectly stationary con- 
dition ; that not only are we to look for change, the common law 
of the finite, a law to which, willingly or unwillingly, we must con- 
form ourselves, but progress is to be expected. Advancement, 
indeed, is the normal condition of man's intellectual and spiritual 
nature. The faU has, it is true, produced derangement in this re- 
gard ; but redemption restores the old order of things, and Provi- 
dence ever harmonizes with redemption. By the Gospel forces 
supervening upon the fall, and working ever in the bosom of our 
lost humanity, and by connected and concurrent outward influences, 
step by step is the race to ascend toward Paradise regained. There 
is to be progress in spirit not merely, but as must ever happen, pro- 
gress in aU accompanying and surrounding forms. Forms have 
always, in relation to the informing or presiding spirit, a certain 
plasticity. They are, when most permanent, as the transparency, 
which, though it remains substantially the same, yet changes ever 
with the light that more and more brightly streams through it. 

The other practical conclusion to which we referred is, that as 
human progress is not arbitrary and mechanical, but of a vital sort 
— as in its main character it is a development, rather than a series 
of independent changes — so while we seek and welcome all possible 
newness of excellence, we must yet cleave persistently to the roots 
and fountains of that excellence in the department of the old. 
Wherever there is growth, there must be something permanent that 
grows. Wherever there is development, there must be something 
abiding to be developed. There are old principles, which if you 



25 

let go, life shall surely go with them. There is an old spirit, which 
if the form come to lack, that shall soon be but a mass of corruption. 
Nay, there is an old form, to which you may give, indeed, a new 
attitude and juxtaposition, a new costume, and even a new hue and 
expression ; but if you lay violent hands upon it, not even the spirit 
shall be left you. That may seem to you, my radical friend, but an 
uncomely creature that is laying your golden eggs, and insufferably 
tedious her processes may appear ; but old -ZEsop can tell you how 
little thrift there will be in seeking to supersede them. It is the 
method of a true conservatism, to inquire, under all the lights both 
of reason and revelation, what, in the nature of things, must be 
cherished as permanent ; and yet, out of the settled and abiding, 
what new good may be evolved. On the old foundations it would 
build, where it may, new superstructures ; out of the old root, it 
would bring the new germ, and stalk, and leaf, and consununate 
flower. 

That we may not, under the dog-star, grow weary of abstrac- 
tions, and that we may the better subserve the end of utility — the 
object, especially, of the present occasion — let us make some brief 
application of the theory thus propounded. It has a bearing, first, 
on the old moralities. These are mentioned first, not because duties 
come in the order of nature before beliefs, but because the ethical 
plane is the most common ground. Whatever men say of dogmas, 
all are loud in praise of the virtues, and all judge it important clearly 
to apprehend them. The forms of morality are as various and 
as manifold as the natures, circumstances, and relations of God's 
intelligent creatures. As circumstances and relations are ever 
changing, so these forms change. It were the acme of folly to take 
other gi'ound ; and it is the height of practical wisdom to judge 
what these mutations should be. But the great elements of virtue 
— those that must abide, whatever else passes away, though even 
the heavens and the earth come to an end — are few and simple. 
They may be reduced indeed, in the very last process of simplifica- 
tion to that one principle, which our Lord declared to be the ful- 
filling of the law. Yet for our present purpose, with a less minute 
analysis, we may speak of them as a glorious trinity — truth, justice, 
and love. These are the old things, which began with the begin- 
ning, and have claimed supremacy in every age. They are more 



26 

ancient indeed tlian tlie everlasting liiUs, and of wider circuit ttan 
that of earth through space. Truth, justice, and love are obliga- 
tory on all worlds. Various may be the application of these prin- 
ciples. In that respect there may be constantly unfolding novelties 5 
just as the same sun is shining ever on new scenes, or as from the 
power of his rays there are ever-varying results. But the princi- 
ples themselves remain the same. In the view of the single eye, 
they never grow dim ; they never lose their grasp upon the upright 
conscience. With unfaltering tenacity a true conservatism main- 
tains its hold upon them ; and that is a rash and ruinous radicalism^ 
which for any purpose, on any pretense, whether in high stations or 
in low, whether in public matters or in private, woeld limit or 
abrogate them. 

From the old moralities we pass to the old doctrines. The beliefs of 
men, as we have already intimated, are fundamental ; they modify 
conduct and they shape destiny. They should be well considered, 
then, and, in whatever direction, formed under the best possible 
lights. It is our present concern to say, that they should be formed 
under the guidance of a true conservatism. They are made up in 
all departments, and especially in the philosophic and religious, of 
the two great elements, the old and the new ; and it is in the due 
correlation of these we advance toward perfectness. More than in 
any other way has truth been hindered, by putting the transient 
in place of the permanent, or the permanent in place of the tran- 
sient — the personal, the provincial, the national, for the universal^ 
or the reverse ; by mistaking idiosyncrasies or excesses which must 
needs be for a time, for those divine fixtures which are, in their 
nature, eternal. Idols of the tribe, of the den, of the forum, of 
the theatre, there are — ^as the author of the Novum Organon has 
it — which it requires all possible care to distinguish from the 
goddess Truth. 

"We forbear, however, for obvious reasons, to particularize under 
this head ; and hastening both to complete our circle of thoughty 
and to link it with the present hour, we advert next to the old in- 
stitutions. Institutions are but the grooves and channels, by which 
the prevalent beliefs, joined with the dominant moralities, go forth 
on their various missions ; the moral machinery, by which, under 
God, principles elaborate human destiny. In view of all the great 



27 

permanencies, both of man's nature and condition, with, which they 
must needs stand connected, it is fitting that there should be in 
them more or less of permanency. Some of them began with the 
earliest ages, and are for all time. Yet in harmony with an ever- 
present law of mutation, they, too, are ever subject to change. To 
maintain their substantial integrity, to see that in their essence and 
aim they receive no detriment, and yet that such mutation shall 
take place as the divine law of progress may require — this is the 
office of a true conservatism. 

There is, first, the Family economy, established in Eden, and re- 
dolent still of the odors of Paradise. It has had, through human 
depravity, disastrous changes ; and to counteract them, Christianity 
has been putting forth its restorative appliances. Yet we are far 
from fancying that perfection is attained. We accord with those 
who say, Let woman be more highly educated ; let her be trained 
to be not the slave, but the companion of man. Let her be strong- 
minded as she may ; but let her not cease to be gentle-minded. In 
seeking equality with man, let her not vainly seek identity. Let 
her neither ignore nor regret those immutable diversities, which are 
hardly less the stability than the adornment of home. Let all her 
rights be regarded ; and in this relation, jurisprudence, it is ad- 
mitted, has yet something to do. Give to the family economy, in 
all its departments, whatever of Christian improvement you may. 
Yet let no vain and visionary socialistic theory, in whatever plaus- 
ible shape, either steal from us, or lower in our regard, that first 
boon of God to our yet sinless race. 

The blessed Sabbath comes next in our thought, as it came 
next in the order of the divine appointment. Into its peacefulness 
and high devotion, the first bridal day lapsed ; nor are hearts well 
wedded now, which are not prepared to welcome it. Clear it, if 
need be, of Pharisaic superstitions; though of these, in our lax age, 
there is little danger. But if you would have happy homes all over 
the land ; to say nothing of higher spiritual good, if you would 
have the most perfect prevalence of order and external morality ; 
if you would have all thrift abound, and all our political institutions 
held safe and permanent; guard, with a sleepless vigilance, this 
*' pearl of days." 

Let the State receive whatever improvement it may. We arc 



28 

not to presume that even in this free land, it is in all points fault- 
less. While we guard, as well we may, against that merging of the 
individual in the body politic, which was a notable characteristic 
of the ancient republics, let us keep ourselves, no less carefully, from 
an excessive individualism. Let us hold fast to the principle of 
self-government which underlies our whole political fabric. Yet 
let us beware of the insane radicalism which in various ways would 
deify the popular will. Let us never forget, that while the divine 
will is the foundation of all government, it does at the same time 
overtop all government ; the " higher law," properly understood, 
being thus as the granite, which while it lies deep at the mountain's 
base, crops out, also, at its sky-piercing summit. 

We might speak of the Church, too, that highest of all social in- 
stitutions; an institution which no "lodge," or "phalanx," or 
other humanly devised fraternity shall ever supersede ; whose 
foundations and pillars, as to each one's faith they stand revealed, 
we should ever guard; whose ancient glories we should ever 
reverence, still welcoming whatever increment of brightness the ad- 
vancing centuries may furnish. We might touch on that connected 
institution, the Ilinistry; not superannuated and effete, as some vainly 
suppose, but wielding a power for good unsurpassed in any pre- 
ceding age ; an institution whose essential functions and excellences 
are to abide, but which is never to repudiate the all-comprehending 
law of progress. We pass, however, as befits the occasion, to speak 
finally, of the School, and especially of that higher department of it, 
the Collegiate, to a new type of which our thoughts are here called. 
Foregoing all more general application of our subject, our position 
is, that in all the leading features of this People's College, the prin- 
ciples of a true conservatism are happily illustrated. While its up- 
rising walls are bedecked, to our mind's eye, with the fairest heraldry 
of the past, we see upon them, too, the most precious gems of the 
present, and the brightest prophetic symbols. 

The plan of this Institution recognizes, in the first place, the 
primary importance of moral culture. It follows herein the best 
time-honored models. Even the old classic masters were reverent, 
in their way, above many a sciolist of modern times. In their 
teachings, at least, they put moral excellence above all other. " O 
beloved Pan, and aU ye other gods of the place!" says Socrates in 



29 

Plato's Phaedrus, " grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, 
and that, whatever outward things I have, may be at peace with 
those within." "We have here the true idea of education, that 
which the best institutions of every age have recognized. Its 
highest aim is to secure inward beauty — not of the intellect alone, 
but of the heart — and all consequent harmonies with the outward. 
There is, without this, no development of the whole man. Not 
only is the higher nature neglected — that to which all else should 
be subordinated, for which indeed all else was made — but even the 
inferior powers fail of the happiest unfolding. The moral or 
spiritual element was designed as the main-spring of the whole 
complex machinery of our being ; and if that be at fault, what 
wonder if all else go wrong ? Even if the intellect be largely de- 
veloped, so that a giant stand before you, the likelihood is that you 
look upon a giant madman. Many a sad illustration of this re- 
mark does the history of the world furnish. Carefully prepared 
statistics have gone far to show that mere mental culture has little 
effect even to diminish crime. The only observable change is in 
form, from the grosser to the more refined methods ; subtle frauds, 
for example, taking the place of brute violence. The untutored 
boor delights in assault and battery, in burglary, or in arson. The 
educated knave peculates on a railroad company, or explodes a 
bank, or handles with light fingers the treasury of the state. A 
tool of keen edge is intellectual acumen ; it is safe only as a well- 
trained conscience wields it. 

Most grateful, therefore, was the announcement made at the out- 
set, that the Bible was to be the corner-stone of this Institution. 
Not that the shibboleth of a sect is here to be honored, but Christ- 
ianity in the broad sense — the Divine "Word in its great generic 
aspects and influences, such as endear it to good men of all religious 
persuasions. Nothing could be of happier omen in relation to in- 
tellectual advancement. No book is so quickening to mind as the 
Bible, the product as it is of the Infinite Mind, and embracing, as it 
does, the broadest and loftiest themes. But it is in the line of 
heart-culture that we chiefly value it. In the fact that Christianity, 
not of the letter but of the spirit, not of the fossil but of the vital 
order — Christianity, not medifeval but sempiternal — is to walk 
hand in hand here with all good science, or, rather, is to hold all 



k 



30 

good science as its ready servitor, we have one of those noble con- 
servative features, vi^liich w^ill commend this Institution to all well- 
balanced and sagacious minds. 

It is a point of like excellence, that due honor is given to the high- 
est intellectual culture. There is a tendency in this fast age, to de- 
part in this regard from the wisdom of the ancients. There is a 
clamor in many quarters for the practical, so called, and a tendency 
to disparage the abstract, which is sure, in the long run, to defeat 
its own ends. " Of what avail to the living," it is asked, " can be 
those dead languages % What good can come of those dry profundi- 
ties of the higher mathematics ? What possible advantage in those 
airy metaphysical flights ? Let us keep to facts, plain and palpable. 
Let our youth busy themselves with those processes of calculation 
only, that bear the stamp of utility. Enough for living men are the 
living languages." It is forgotten, in all this, that there is good 
training in all abstract study, that the mind is strengthened there- 
by for the plain every-day work. There are, besides, vital connec- 
tions between all science ; all learning helps all learning — all the 
higher learning, especially, all the lower. It is forgotten, too, that 
out of the abstract comes all the concrete, that the abstract under- 
lies it all, that it is really mastered only as that is mastered, that 
other things being equal, the best thinker is the best worker, the 
best theorist the most truly practical man. Deep-thinking, depend 
upon it, is the mould in which all good practice is cast. It were 
well if the decriers of abstract science would remember their deep 
indebtedness to it. How omnipresent and all-pervading is it. How 
does it flash from the ploughshare, the spindle, and the loom ; how 
radiant with it are the plainest vessels of our daily repast. Nor is 
the case altered, though our immediate obligation be to unlettered 
genius. How instinct with it is the iron man of the age, and the 
iron woman. As with a sort of creative power, it touches the fields, 
and they are clothed with a deeper verdure and a richer fruitage. It 
lights our dwellings for us ; it bears pure and refreshing water to 
our lips ; I need not tell you with what higher marvels, as of magic, 
it is crowning this nineteenth century. It is under the guidance of 
abstract science, however unconscious of it, our artisans, and even 
our day laboi'ers are toiling. The plain things of the work-shop 
may aU be traced back, directly or indirectly, to recondite arithme- 



31 

tical processes, to complex algebraic formulae, to the curves and 
angles and right lines of the black-board ; nay, even to still more 
abstract studies, whose only immediate result, beyond the discipline 
of the mind, was the discovery or the confirmation of some great gen- 
eral principle. 

There has doubtless been in past ages, an error on the side of the 
abstract. In the times of the old schoolmen, inquiries were prose- 
cuted often, which were eveiy way unprofitable. We should be slow 
to remit the human mind to such problems, for example — however 
sublime in the eyes of Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas — as 
" W hether God loves a possible angel better than an actually ex- 
istent fly?" or " Whether besides the actual being of real being, 
there be any other being necessary to cause a thing to be V The 
clangor of fierce dispute on such topics will never, we opine, re- 
sound through these halls. Yet the friends of solid learning will 
rejoice to see that there is no running to the opposite extreme, that 
there is a holding fast to all the good things of the olden time. 
They will be pleased to observe in the programme of the Institu- 
tion — ^not to be attained by all, yet open to all, and so duly honor- 
ed — not only the ancient languages, with mathematics broadly 
considered, but intellectual philosophy in its fullest scope. No det- 
riment will these studies be, but a help rather, as we have seen, to 
the more practical curriculum. It is gratifying to note, also, in the 
whole plan of instruction — as, in the outline, the Trustees have re- 
cently settled it — the stamp of a profound, comprehensive, method- 
izing science, a philosophic apprehension of the mutual relations 
and affinities of all the knowledges. The most empirical forms of 
study are felicitously linked with the most abstract and absolute. 

It is another conservative trait of the People's College, that it 
recognizes the dignity of labor. Herein it takes to itself the glory 
of man's pristine state ; for " the Lord God put him into the gar- 
den of Eden to dress and to keep it." Labor was good for him as 
yet unfallen ; and though, as a sinner, he must needs pass from 
facile horticulture, relieved by angel-visits, to harder agriculture, 
beset with thorns and thistles, yet with the very sweat of the brow, 
the divine benignity has mingled a blessing. It is good that man 
be in some way a worker — all ages have found it so. Honorable, 
indeed, is mere brain-work ; no idlers are they who toil only in the 



32 

study. They are bretliren all, as we have seen, in the sense of 
helpfulness, to him who labors in grosser v.'^ays. They are brethren, 
too, in honor. Old Cincinnatus will tell us so, and the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles, whose own hands ministered to his neces- 
sities, and our blessed Lord himself, who wrought in early life, 
as there is reason to think, at the trade of a carpenter. Nay, we 
have the divine example on a higher and broader scale. With 
what various mechanisms, the product of the Infinite "Worker, is 
the universe replete. What a wondrous laboratory is it all. How 
works he, at once inviting and helping the toil of the husbandman^ 
in the bosom of our mother earth. What subtle and potent im- 
plements are his — of sunlight that pierces and quickens it, of 
breezes that fan it, of rains that percolate through it, of dews that 
cool it, of manifold dynamic forces that permeate and transform it. 
What products are those of the tiller of the soil, co-working with 
his Divine Exemplar. What master-pieces of exquisite structure, 
of form, and of hue. With what living tapestries does he over- 
spread the landscape — with what panoramas of beauty, such as art, 
at the best, can but faintly copy. How fundamental to domestic 
comfort, to social weal, to national wealth, is the vocation of the 
husbandman. Even that conceited, affected, supercilious thing, 
seen often in the streets of our cities, and called familiarly a dandy 
— so disdainful of all labor, aU rural labor especially, so contempt- 
uously ignorant of all that pertains to it, unable to recognize even 
a pumpkin, save that animated one at his upper extremity — not even 
he is exempt from the common indebtedness. Say, if you will, that 
the tailor and the barber made him — there is a measure of truth, 
we confess, in Avhat you say ; yet a little thought will show you 
how great is the dependence both of the tailor and the barber, and 
so of their finical handiwork, upon the honest toil he despises. 

It is well that labor is to be honored here, the labor both of the 
field and the work-shop, by the large application of science to it. 
Thus, with a true conservatism, shall the substantial worth of the 
old be not only retained, but subjected to all the refining and ele- 
vating influences of the new. It is well that young men are to be 
taught to labor here. This feature of the plan shall be not merely 
a financial convenience, it shall be a great physical benefit. It 
shall restore to the modern culture that ancient gymnastic element 



33 

which has ahnost gone into desuetude. It shall wage an extermi- 
nating war with a multitude of ills which beset the path of the stu- 
dent. It shall give no quarter to hydra-headed dyspepsy, to nervous 
lassitudes, to bronchial tendernesses, to factitious cravings for nar- 
cotic stimulants. Putting the physical nature in better tone, it 
shall give tone to the intellectual. It shall lill these halls, not 
with walking skeletons, but with men worthy of the name. It 
shall tend powerfully to secure that inestimable combination, too 
oftsn lacking in our modern seminaries of learning, yet celebrated 
in classic phrase, as the " mens sana in coi'pore sano." 

I add, only, this Institution has a crowning claim on the favor 
of the soundest minds, in that it is a college for the people. Not 
that our other schools of the same class come in no sense under 
this designation. I assent to the claim preferred on their behalf, 
by my honored friend of Williams, whose words of wisdom were 
uttered over your newly-laid corner-stone. It is the glory of their 
history, that they have so largely '• dispersed," that they have 
"given" even "to the poor." They have copied, in this, the best 
patterns of other days. It is the design of this Institution to make 
some advance in the same direction, to offer to the people — to all 
classes of them — some special facilities. It accords, herein, with 
one of the happiest tendencies of the age. A true conservatism 
— such as befits the times, such as is becoming more and more 
prevalent — while it would preserve all good old things, giving them 
all desirable modem complements and shapings, aims to keep only 
by diffusing. It is the conservatism of circulation, like that of the 
human frame, or of the great globe we inhabit. The age of mo- 
nopoly has gone by. More and more, everywhere and in all 
things, in our own happy land especially, are the people cared 
for. All literature shows this. History was once mainly of 
crowned heads, and courts, and diplomacies, and armies, and 
battles. Now it takes us to the hamlet and the fireside. It inter- 
weaves now with its more gorgeous chronicles, 

" The short and simple annals of the poor." 

Fiction concerns itself, too, with the people, turning from the 
glare of aristocratic life to their lowest walks. Poetry has her 
" songs of labor," and Philosophy unfolds her mysteries " in the 
openings of the gates." Government leans more and more in the 
3 



34 

same direction ; with many drawbacks, indeed, and vicissitudes of 
progress, it is becoming more and more of the people, and for the 
people. All institutions are feeling the general impulse, the college 
among them. Oiit of this impulse, so wise, so benevolent, so accord- 
ant with Christianity — bom of it, indeed — so harmonious with all 
our political economies, this College has grown. In its adaptations 
of science to all popular uses ; in the choices of study it will afford ; 
in its gratuitous provisions ; in its facilities for self-support ; in 
its mechanical and agricultural models ; in the opening of its lec- 
tures to men of all classes ; in the connection and fellovirship it pro- 
poses, of minds in the lower processes of cultui-e with those in the 
higher; the noble design is, to make it in deed just what it is in 
name. While its light shall gleam upon the summits of society — 
in a peculiar sense it may be said — there is no vale so lowly but 
shall be gladdened by it. 

One of its most praiseworthy offices shall be, to draw from 
obscurity 

"■Many a gem of purest ray serene." 

A vision of the future — one that may stand for many — ■ 
unfolds itself as I speak. I see a bright-eyed, high-browed 
farmer's boy, of sun-bumt visage, " driving his team afield.'" 
He moves mechanically along, his mind absent the while- 
He is a thoughtful boy. He is an indefatigable reader, 
devouring the newspapers, and the cheap magazines, and 
exhausting the village library. In the brief term of the win- 
ter's school, he is first in every study. He longs for higher op- 
portunities, yet knows not how to find them. He has been a 
charmed listener at college commencements, as one catching 
strains of music from some Paradise, whose gates were closed 
against him. Oh, that those gates might open ! Oh, that he,, 
too, might tread those heights of science ! He pours, at lengthy 
his aspirations into a fond mother's ear — the mother is the 
first confidant, usually, of the high-hearted boy. A ready and ap- 
preciative confidant is she, not alone from the love she bears him, 
but from her own lofty nature. Noble boys, commonly, have 
noble mothers. She lays the matter to heart ; she will press it, if 
possible, to some good issue. And so, at length, a family council 



35 

is held. " I would willingly spare his services," says the sympa- 
thizing father. " Upon these broad shoulders I would take, for his 
sake, even in life's decline, still heavier burdens. Time for study 
I would give him ; but, in my straitened circumstances, I cannot 
possibly furnish the needful pecuniary means." The budding 
hopes of the boy are crushed ; and, \\ith a heavy heart, he goes 
back to the plough. But just now, upon him, as upon many others, 
a new light breaks. He reads, in the weeldy papers, of the 
People's College, of its completed halls, its well-filled professorships, 
its ample courses of study, its means of self-sustenance. His pur- 
pose is quickly formed. He enrolls his name on the list of its 
pupils. Its highest honors crown him at last. A new jewel is set 
in his country's diadem. 

Let this goodly enterprise go onward ! Let nothing stay it — let 
all lend it a helping hand. It has had, thus far, not only the 
increasing favor of the community at large, but the manifest smile 
of a benignant Providence. Well may we congratulate its found- 
ers and its officers, on the auspicious circumstances in which they 
assemble to-day. My heart impels me to honor, as the proprieties 
of the occasion hardly allow, the individual liberality in which this 
institution had its origin. To what better use can the men of 
princely fortunes dedicate their treasures, than the diffusion among 
the people of all good knowledge ? What a true conservatism is 
this, what a genuine nobleness of character does it indicate ! I 
rejoice to see men of such proclivities rising up among us. My 
attention was attracted, recently, in our New York Broadway, by 
the very plain vehicle of one of the plainest of our citizens, yet 
one whose name is not unworthy to be mentioned on this occasion. 
A stranger might have fancied him some master-mechanic, riding 
to and fro to superintend his contracts. Yet I doubt if the equi- 
page of Louis Napoleon would have awakened a deeper interest in 
my mind. He was the munificent founder of what, against his 
own design, we insist on calling the Cooper Institute. There 
were laurels, to my eye, on his brow, such as deck the authors of 
all like enterprises, compared with which those of Magenta and 
Solferino are as withered flowers. My heart throbs with a not dis- 
similar interest, as I gaze to-day upon these uprising walls. Be 
the benison of high Heaven still upon them. To the large charity 



36 

wMcli has given birtli to tMs midertaldng, be other charities added 
— charities which shall bless as well those who give as those v/ho 
take — until the work shall be consummated ; till, from the conflu- 
ence of many streams, a mighty river shall flow onward, refreshing 
and beautifying the whole broad landscape. 



LATTER HALF OF THE 

Address of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D., 



PBESIDENT OP WILLIAMS COLLBGB, 



At the Laying of the Corner-stone of the College Edifice. 



So far, then, as this Institution shall give a liberal education, it 
will not be distinctively, the People's College. It can be so only as 
it shaU be of the nature of a professional school, and shall give in- 
struction in the theory and practice of those occupations Avhich are 
more generally pursued by the people. Such instructions it will, I 
presume, be the primary and specific object of the Institution to 
give, and the more perfectly it can combine with these an edueation 
truly liberal, the better. If, however, we are not to have virtually 
two institutions, one for a liberal, and one for a professional educa- 
tion, all experience shows that there will be required a large out- 
lay, and much practical wisdom in the combination. 

Is, then, an institution needed for these specific purposes ? We 
say, Yes. This arises from the vast extension of the physical 
sciences within the last fifty years, and fi'om their intimate connec- 
tion with the business and enjoyment, and progress of society. 

They have been like a newly discovered, or upheaved continent, 
rich in gems, and pearls, and mines of gold, and requiring old rela- 
tions to be re-adjusted. These sciences have been taught in our 
colleges. Their professors have been its high priests ; they must 
be an essential part of a liberal education. But there has been a 
growing feeling that the colleges did not, in that respect, meet the 
wants of the community. With this feeling I have sympathized, 



37 

and have never failed to encourage the establishment of lyceums, 
and of agricultural schools. Physical science is capable of being 
made popular, not only in its facts and wonderful applications, but 
in its principles. Let it be made so ; let it be made accessible to 
the people, and to all the people. 

And, sir, I should expect that an education in which physical 
science, and its practical application, rather than classical learn- 
ing or metaphysical study, should be the predominating idea, 
would in some respects be superior to that given in our colleges, 
and thus tend to correct what is one-sided and partial in that ; for, 
as I have said, the colleges have made mistakes. 

And, 1st, it would tend to quicken and improve the powers of 
observation. 

There is room in these sciences for inferences, in some, for those^ 
mathematically drawn ; but the basis of all is observation, the use of 
the five senses, and the tendency is to improve the power of observ- 
ation. In the college, the tendency is the other way, and this 
power is not cultivated as it may be and should be, and I think will 
be. Few know what capacities there are in the senses, till they at- 
tempt to supply the loss of one through another ; and for want of 
the power of observing through them, many go through life " see- 
ing and see not." 

In the second place, such an education would tend to give a 
knowledge of things rather than of ivords. Education is concerned 
either with things, or with their signs. These are intimately asso- 
ciated ; so much so, that, in our general speculations, we think by 
means of signs. These signs, combined into a language, have their 
laws, and are well worthy of study as monuments of a Avisdom 
more than human, and as expressions and depositories of human 
thought. But men have studied languages till they have forgotten 
the things they denote. They have reasoned by means of words, 
and have mistaken verbal connections for the connection of things. 
They have connected in sentences words which they supposed to 
correspond to things, when they did not, and so have spoken and 
written nonsense without knowing it. They have been word- 
mongers, verbal-triflers, than whom nothing could seem to earnest 
men more impertinent, in a world like this. There was a time 
when education consisted chiefly in the knowledge of language, and 



38 

the powei' of disposing words into logical formulas. But most ed- 
ucators now understand, tliat the knowledge of things is more im- 
portant than that of their signs, and that the best way of teaching, 
respecting any thing that can be subjected to the senses, is to sub- 
ject it to the senses. Let the thing be, not described only, but seen, 
and touched, and then it will be known. 

No man knows, or can know, how the moon looks through a tel- 
escope, or a fixed star, or a nebula, till he sees it. No young per- 
son can adequately know granite, or mica slate, by description. 
Things capable of being learned through the senses, must be learn- 
ed through the senses. This will require apparatus that shaU illus- 
trate every process of nature and of art, that shall sound the depths 
of nature both in her vastness and in her minuteness ; it will re- 
quire specimens, collections, cabinets, that shall epitomize nature, 
and present in one view, and in orderly arrangement, the scattered 
materials of science. In aU this, the tendency of this Institution 
wiU be in the right direction. 

Again, we may hope for improvement from this Institution in the 
combination of physical with mental labor. This is a most im- 
portant point, and presents a problem not yet solved. 

The object here is, 1st, health ; 2d, economy ; and 3d, a know- 
ledge of some manual occupation that may, if need be, be fallen 
back upon in after-life. Sir, I would that each of these objects 
might be accomplished for every literary man. It would give dig- 
nity to labor, and health and independence to literature. There are 
few objects more helpless or pitiable, than a man who attempts a 
liberal education, and through that to attain a support and position 
in society, and fails. Such cases are not uncommon. Parents 
make mistakes ; young men make mistakes. Mentally, or morally, 
they are unqualified for that great work. Instead of gaining intel- 
lectual power they lose physical power ; they smoke and lounge, 
and instead of getting an education, simply get muddled. "What 
can they do ? Some lose their health, and what can they do 1 
They need to have, as the Apostle Paul, and the learned Jews gen- 
erally had, some craft to fall back upon. This the colleges cannot 
give. At present, they attempt nothing systematically. The 
whole thing is lumbering along. Manual-labor schools are regard- 
ed as a failure, and the country is Ijang on its oars. The best the 



I 



39 

colleges can do, is to give to the muscles a training according to 
the system of Ling, having for its end their symmetrical develop- 
ment, and perfection; that is to give them a liberal education. 
This they ought to do. If any one will furnish the means, I will 
see that it shall be done in one College at least. But even this 
would not be as desirable as what is proposed in this Institution. 
Wliat would be the most desirable of all, and I think perfectly 
practicable here, would be a combination of what may be called a 
liberal and professional training for the muscular system. At any 
rate, let us have some training. Any system of education which results 
practically in the deterioration of the body, is false. Why should this 
complex and wonderful system be ignored, and its health and capabili- 
ties of symmetery, and grace, and power, and of ministering to the 
higher wants of the spirit, be wholly neglected, or left to inexperience 
and caprice ? Leave young men to themselves, with their innate ten- 
dencies to indolence, and with the prevalent wretched habits in regard 
to narcotics, and many of them will deteriorate. You see it, and 
would gladly prevent it, but are powerless. Sir, I go heartily with 
this Institution in its attempt to solve the problem of a right com- 
bination of physical with mental labor, and of both, so far as pos- 
sible, with self-support. 

But the great object of a People's College, and one that would 
justify any outlay, is to unite in the same person, the hands that 
do the working, with the head that does the thinking. It is the 
mastery of nature by science, and then the intelligent application of 
science, with and without mechanism, to the purposes of human 
life. It is one great feature of this age, that mechanism and 
science are in such intimate combination with all our industrial 
products and pursuits. By machinery we spin, and weave, and 
plant, and mow, and reap, and chisel, and plane, and knit, and 
sew, and travel. Some of the machinery seems to think, and so 
rapid is the improvement in it, that the machinery of one year 
scarcely serves for the next. It is scarcely more a business now to 
produce what is immediately needed for man, than to produce the 
machinery for producing that. So also, by science we analyze and 
compound soils, we make and apply manures, we bleach, and dye, 
and tan leather, we avail ourselves of the affinities, attractions, 
repulsions, powers of combination that there are in matter, and 



40 

reach the precise element that does the work in every process. We 
make steam mightier than a giant, and as versatile as a Yankee. 
"We make an artist of the sun, and of the lightning an engraver 
and a post-boy. 

In this way the primitive implements and processes of a simple 
and rude period are superseded, the products of industry, and the 
demands for them are diversified and increased a thousand-fold ; and 
as these are increased, so are wealth and leisure. But as this pro- 
cess goes on, it is obvious that intelligence, skill, a knowledge of 
principles, and the power of adaptation to emergencies in applying 
them, will enter more and more into all production ; and that what 
will amount to a high, if not to a liberal education, will be required 
in conducting most profitably industrial pursuits. 

In managing every machine that has a principle, in conducting 
every process that has a philosophy, we would have those who 
manage the machine understand the principle, those who conduct 
the process understand its philosophy. 

Guided by such knowledge, labor will be respected, and will be 
profitable. We thus reach two elements that are indispensable to 
the prosperity of free institutions, and which, with the moral ele- 
ment, will secure that prosperity, and give them a resistless power 
of extension. These are, lahor respected, and labor compensated. Let 
labor be respected as it should be, and compensated as it should be, 
and you may fling to the winds all fear for the extension, or per- 
manent existence of slavery. But to be respected, labor must not 
only be free, it must be intelligent ; and we all know that, as a 
general rule, compensation will be as the intelligence and skill re- 
quired in the labor. Sir, we hope that this Institution is to do 
something, is to do much in promoting respect for labor, and com- 
pensation for labor. We trust that it will be to these the means of 
a permanent onward step. In the great conflict that is noAv going 
on between, I will not say free and slave labor, but between labor 
enlightened and respected, and labor imbruted and despised, we 
trust that this Institution Avill be a prominent agent in harnessing 
the agencies of nature, and the might of machinery, to our free 
institutions, and in bearing them on with augmented beauty and 
power, to their fuU and ultimate triumph. 

In aU these points will this Institution be in accordance Avith the 



41 

Bible, and in none more so than in the study of the works of God 
for the benefit of man. " Consider," says the Scripture, " the 
wondi-ous works of God." " Dost thou know the balancing of the 
clouds, the wondrous works of him which is perfect in know- 
ledge 1" "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them 
that have pleasure therein." , The Bible has no fear ; we have no 
fear of any conflict with the Bible from a study of the works of 
God. Certainly there are points in the study of those works at 
which men may diverge into skepticism. When they look at the 
origin of matter, and the impossibility of conceiving of its creation, 
they may identify it with the substance of God. AYlien they look 
at those uniformities on which science is based, they may see evi- 
dence of nothing higher than an impersonal power. But these are 
the very points where an enlightened reason would stand with the 
highest wonder and adoration. Certainly we cannot fathom the 
mystery of creation ; but it is only in the presence of that, and 
others like that, that speculation becomes rapt into a rational won- 
der, and that the spirit echoes back the words of inspiration: 
'"Who by seai'ching, can find out Godf Certainly we are placed 
in the midst of a vast system of uniformities which we call nature, 
uniformities of succession, and uniformities of construction ; but it 
is only when we see that it is in that very uniformity that there 
lies all the power there is in nature of teaching man ; that from 
it is derived all the power that man has over nature ; only when 
we see it thus ministering to freedom, and therefore originated in 
freedom, and upheld by the miglit of Infinite Will, that the 
spirit again echoes back most fully the words of inspiration : 
" Great and marvelous are thy works. Lord God Almighty." 

These general observations I make without having been in the 
counsels of those who have originated this Institution, and with no 
knowledge of local questions. I make them on broad grounds, feel- 
ing that the vast increase of physical science, and the change of its 
relations to industrial pursuits, requii'e a diversity of institutions. 
I make them, too, willing that gi'eat resources should be held by in- 
ttlligent men " with a limber elbow," to make trial of new combina- 
tions in the educational elements. I do not believe that perfection 
in education is yet reached. I do not believe that we have yet 
learned how to make of man all that may be made of him. Who 



42 

shall say this of man, the most complex, and impressible, and 
flexible of all beings, when we are daily finding new capabilities 
and uses in the simplest objects and elements around us 1 Here is 
a fiddle with one string. See what sounds you can bring from it. 
Now let a musician of high power take it, and you will see that 
there are capabilities in it that you did not know how to bring out. 
But now let Ole Bull take it, and it will appear that there are ca- 
pabilities in that one fiddle-string that have been unknown since 
the world began. Can he exhaust them "? I do not know. But so 
far as matter is capable of education, that fiddle-string would be 
perfectly educated only when every capacity for music there was in 
it should be called out. Take some water ; it may become two 
separate gases, or vapor, or snow, or ice, or steam : in becoming 
ice, it may split rocks ; as steam, it drives engines ; in the hydrau- 
lic press, it may move the world. Is it yet trained as it may be "? 
Here is electricity. Now it is the bolt of heaven ; now the play- 
thing of a philosopher ; now a medical agent ; now it passes from 
city to city, and tells the news ; and now it is taught to traverse 
the bed of the Atlantic, and was but yesterday writing the names of 
Field, and of his associates, in letters of fire all over the land. Who 
shall teach it the next lesson "? Who bring out all its capacity ? 

Up to a certain point, man is like matter, acting by a law of ne- 
cessity, as he is acted upon. Here he will be fully educated only 
as every susceptibility is awakened, and every harmony between 
him and the external universe is called forth. But beyond this, 
man is an agent, with the power in himself of a free and independ- 
ent activity. Here is the bafl[ling element, the source of an endless 
complexity. This free and spiritual being ! Who shall, I will not 
say, teach him knowledge — that were little ; but who shall lead him 
to subject himself to the laws of his oivn being ? In this alone, is the 
development of a true manhood. Without this, what is commonly 
called education, acquisitions, accomplishments, polish, trained fac- 
ulties, the subjection of nature, are as nothing. These are a part 
of education, but not its essential part. Who shall combine all 
these into one harmonious whole ■? That would be education. 
Who shall give us that noblest of aU products, a true man "? In this 
great work, we welcome every aid. We welcome the aid of the 
Institution whose corner-stone has now been laid. Long may it 
stand, a monument to the wisdom of its founders, an ornament and 
a blessing to this beautiful region. 



43 



ADDRESS 
By the Hon. Horace Greeley, at the same tijie. 

Fellow-Citizens and Friends : As one of the early and ear- 
nest, if not very efficient advocates of this College, allow me to state 
briefly the ideas and purposes which animated the pioneers in the 
enterprise of which we to-day celebrate the preliminary triumph. 

I. The germinal idea of the People's College affirms the necessity 
of a thorough and appropriate education for the Practical Man in 
whatever department of Business or Industry. The Farmer, Me- 
chanic, Manufacturer, Engineer, Miner, &c., &c., needs to under- 
stand thoroughly the materials he employs or moulds, and the laws 
which govern their various states and transmutations. In other 
words a thorough mastery of Geology, Chemistry, and the related 
Sciences, with their applications, is to-day the essential basis of fit- 
ness to lead or direct in any department of Industry. This know- 
ledge we need seminaries to impart — seminaries which shall be de- 
voted mainly, or at least emphatically, to Natural Science, and Avhich 
shall not require of their pupils the devotion of their time and men- 
tal energies to the study of the Dead Languages. I am not here to 
denounce or disparage a classical course of study. I trust and have 
no doubt that facilities for pursuing such a course will be afforded 
and improved in this Institution. I only protest against the re- 
quirement of application to and proficiency in the Dead Languages 
of all College Students, regardless of the length of time they may 
be able to devote to study, and of the course of life they meditate. 
A classical education may be very appropriate, even indispensable 
for the emliryo Lawyer or Clergyman, yet not at all suited to the 
wants of the prospective Farmer, Artisan, or Engineer. We want 
a seminary which recognizes the varying intellectual needs of all 
our aspiring youth, and suitably pi'ovides for them. We want a 
seminary Avhich provides as fitly and thoroughly for the education 
of the " Captains of Industry," as Yale or Harvard does for those 
who are dedicated to either of the Professions. 

n. We seek and meditate a perfect combination of Study with 
Labor. Of course, this is an enterprise of great difficulty, destined 
to encounter the most formidable obstacles from false pride, natural 
indolence, fashion, tradition, and exposure to ridicule. It is de- 



u 

plorably true that a large portion, if not -even a majority, of our 
youth seeking a liberal education, addict themselves to Study in or- 
der that they may escape a life of Manual Labor, and would prefer 
not to study, if they knew how else to make a living without down- 
right muscvilar exertion, but they do not ; so they submit to be 
ground through academy and college, not that they love study or its 
intellectual fruits, but that they may obtain a livelihood with the 
least possible sweat and toil. Of course, these will not be attracted 
by our programme, and it is probably well for us that they are not. 
But I think there is a class — small, perhaps, but increasing — who 
would fain study, not in order to escape their share of manual labor, 
but to qualify them to perform their part in it more efficiently and 
usefully — not in order to shun work, but to qualify them to work to 
better purpose. They have no mind to be made drudges, but they 
have faith in the ultimate elevation of mankind above the necessity 
of life-long, unintermitted drudgery, and they aspire to do something 
toward securing or hastening that consummation. They know that 
Manual Labor can only be dignified or elevated by rendering it more 
intelligent and efficient, and that this cannot be so long as the edu- 
cated and the intellectual shun such labor, as fit only for boors. 

Our idea regards physical Exertion as essential to human de- 
velopment, and Productive Lidustry as the natural, proper, God- 
given sphere of such exertion. Exercise, Recreation, Play, are Avell 
enough in their time and place ; but Work is the Divine provision 
for developing and strengthening the physical frame. Dyspepsia, 
Debility, and a hundred forms of wasting disease, are the results of 
ignorance or defiance of this truth. The stagnant marsh, and the 
free, pure running stream, aptly exemplify the disparity in health 
and vigor between the worker and the idler. LiteUectual labor, 
rightly directed, is noble — far be it from me to disparage it — but it 
does not renovate and keep healthful the physical man. To this 
end, we insist, persistent muscular exertion is necessary, and, as it 
is always well that exercise should have a purpose other than exer- 
cise, every human being not paralytic or bedridden should bear a 
part in Manual Labor, and the young and immature most of all. 
The brain-sweat of the student — the tax levied by study on the cir- 
culation and the vision — are best counteracted by a daily devotion 
of a few hours to Manual Labor. 



45 

Moreover, there are thousands of intellectual, aspiring youth, 
■who are engaged in a stem wrestle with poverty — who have no re- 
latives who can essentially aid them, and only a few dollars and their 
own muscles between them and the alms-house. These would 
gladly qualify themselves for the highest usefulness ; but how shall 
they ? If they must give six months of each year to teaching, or 
some other vocation, in order to provide means for pursuing their 
studies through the residue of the year, their progress must be slo w 
indeed. But bring the study and the work together — let three or 
four hours of labor break up the monotony of the day's lessons — 
and they may pursue their studies from New- Year's to Christmas, 
and from their sixteenth year to their twenty-first, respectively, 
should they see fit, without serious or damaging interruption. I 
know that great difficulties are to be encountered, great obstacles 
surmounted, in the outset ; but I feel confident that each student of 
sixteen years or over, who gives twenty hours per week to manual 
labor at this CoUege, may earn at least $1 per week from the out- 
set, and ultimately $2, and in some cases $3 per week by such la- 
bor. How Avelcome an accession to his scanty means many a needy 
student would find this sum, I need not insist on. And when it is 
considered that this modicum of labor would at the same time con- 
duce to his health, vigor, and physical development, and tend to 
qualify him for usefulness and independence in after-life, I feel that 
the importance and beneficence of the requirements of manual 
labor, embodied in the constitution of this College, cannot be 
over-estimated. 

m. Another idea, cherished by the friends of this enterprise, 
was that of Justice to Woman. They did not attempt to indicate 
nor to define "Woman's Sphere — to decide that she ought or ought 
not to vote or sit on juries — to prescribe how she should dress, nor 
what should be the limits of her field of life-long exertion. They 
did not assume that her education should be identical with that of 
the stronger sex, nor to indicate wherein it should be peculiar ; but 
they did intend that the People's College should afford equal facili- 
ties and opportunities to Young Women as to Young Men, and 
should proffer them as freely to the former as to the latter, allowing 
each student under the guidance of his or her parents, with the 
counsel of the Faculty, to decide for him or herself what studies to 



46 

pursue and what emphasis should be given to each. They believed 
that Woman, like Man, might be trusted to determine for herself 
what studies were adapted to her needs, and what acquirements 
would most conduce to her own preparation for, and efficiency in, 
the duties of active life. They held the education of the two sexes 
together to be advantageous if not indispensable to both, imparting 
strength, earnestness, and dignity to Woman, and grace, sweetness, 
and purity to Man. They believed that such commingling in the 
halls of learning would animate the efforts and accelerate the 
progress of the youth of either sex, through the influence of the 
natural and laudable aspiration of each to achieve and enjoy the 
good opinion of the other. They believed that the mere aspect of 
a College whereto both sexes are welcomed as students, would pre- 
sent a strong contrast to the naked, slovenly, neglected, ungraceful, 
cheerless appearance of the old-school Colleges, which would fur- 
nish of itself a strong argument in favor of the more generous 
plan. I trust this idea of the pioneers will not be ignored by their 
successors. 

Friends, a noble beginning has here been made ; may the enter- 
prise be vigorously prosecuted to completion. To this end, it is 
necessary that means should be provided ; that the wealthy of their 
abundance, and the poorer according to their ability, should con- 
tribute to the founding and endowment of the noble Institution 
whose corner-stone we have just laid. Let each contribute who 
can, and a Seminary shall here be established which shall prove a 
blessing — the parent of kindred blessings — to your children and 
your children's children throughout future time. 



ADDRESS 

By the Rev. F. G. Hibbaed, D.D., Editor of the Northern 
Christian Advocate. 

Mr. President : This College is intended to combine theory 
with practice, science with art, and thus give a practical applica- 
tion of the knowledge acquired at school. Practical wisdom is the 
highest wisdom. It is the latest growth of the human mind, the 
ripe autumn fruit of his intellectual labor. In childhood, the mus- 
cular and the animal prevail in man's character ; in youth, he is 



47 

visionary, romantic, and unreal ; in manhood, he is intellectual and 
abstract ; and in age only does he become practical. It is so in the 
world's history. The progress of the race Is but the gi'owth of an 
individual upon a larger scale. The world has had its infancy of 
mere muscular and animal life. That was the age when man was 
engrossed in hunting, fishing, rude occupations, pyramid-building, 
war, and such like. It has also had Its growth of romance, of 
mytliology, poetry, and chivalry. It has had its manhood of the 
intellectual sciences, history, and the fine arts. But It Is now only 
entering upon Its mature style of practical life. The last thing a 
man learns Is, how to apply his Intellectual acquirements, his In- 
ventiveness, his genius, to procure for himself the practical comforts 
of life. The type of the ancient Grecian mind was in this respect 
full of admonition. Instead of advancing from the rude condition 
of childhood with a steady gradation to the higher useful arts, and 
thus developing civilization by a natural growth, the Grecian mind 
went clear over to the Intellectual and absti-act, and rested there. The 
Greeks cultivated metaphysics, and logic and poetry, and some of the 
fine arts, to an extent that furnishes models for this age, while their 
domestic architecture, and style of domestic comforts, were rude 
and semi-barbarous. What Is civilization ? Is It not the diffusion 
of the useful arts so that a standard of external comfort and enjoy- 
ment, based upon correct knowledge and refinement, shall be com- 
mon to all ranks of society ? This Is practical wisdom. True 
civilization is the practical adaptation of science and philosophy to 
the comfort and well-being of man In society. This is the idea of 
the People's College. It is to teach men to apply their knowledge 
to practical uses. India, and Chaldea, and Egypt, and Greece, 
have had their systems of cosmogony, astrology, and metaphysics* 
but with all their knowledge of heaven and earth, they never knew 
how to make a plough. India has raised her cotton, since the days 
of Herodotus and earlier, but never knew how to construct a power- 
loom to weave It, or a jenny to spin it. This day, she ploughs her 
low lands from five to fifteen times before the soil Is sufficiently 
broken for planting ; so rude are her Instruments. Egypt supplied 
the world with corn, but she trod it into the earth after sowing, 
with the feet of cattle, and thrashed It after reaping in the same 
way, and never had a plough, or a cultivator, or a drag, or a 
thrashing-machine, that deserved the name. You may start fi-om 



48 

the eastern shore of China, and travel leisurely westward through 
Asia and Europe, till you reach the western coast, and you will not 
find a people who know how to make a plough on correct philo- 
sophic principles, embodying the laws of the wedge, the inclined 
plane, and screw, for cutting, lifting, and turning the soil. The 
world is just learning the use of science. From the days of the 
first man who invented tea-drinking, down to this hour, men have 
been acquainted with the existence, and some of the properties of 
steam. But its use in the arts, manufactures, commerce, and as a 
mighty civilizer, was never known tiU a recent day. Men have 
been familiar with the appearance of lightning from the days of 
the first man, and have supposed it was good for nothing but to 
make thunder out of, till now, when we have made it subservient 
to the highest ends of man's intelligence, and a pacific bond of na- 
tions. We are getting to learn that God made the world for some- 
thing. It is Avritten in the Bible, " The earth hath he given to the 
children of men." But what does this vast patrimony avail us, if 
we cannot make it subserve our comforts ? The world is not a 
great fishing and hunting-ground for savages, but a theatre of in- 
telligence, and man is just learning how to press the laws of nature 
into his service, and harness her forces to do his work, and he finds 
that God has given him a rich inheritance. 

Sir, the People's College is intended to teach agriculture and the 
useful arts in connection with scientific, mathematical, and classical 
knowledge, and it marks a new epoch in the history of education 
in this country. This magnificent edifice now going up, is to be a 
temple consecrated to practical wisdom. This Corner-Stone shall 
be the foundation of a new order of things, in the training of our 
youth. They shall go out from these halls furnished and skilled 
for the useful and substantial callings of life. This theoiy of edu- 
cation must prevail. And, while the fabric of our free institutions 
shall stand, while the love of the useful shall possess the human 
breast, this Institution shall remain to bless the world, and as a 
monument to the practical wisdom of this age. 



49 



A COiMBINATION OF PORTIONS OF THE REMARKS OF 
DIFFERENT GENTLEMEN, ON THE DAY OF LAY- 
ING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE COLLEGE. 

Remarks of Hon. A. S. Diven, of Elmira. 

It is because I understand the design of this College to be to pro- 
mote the equal and thorough education of youth in all conditions of 
life ; to blend labor with knowledge, science with practice ; thus 
elevating, ennobling, and equalizing the people ; that I proclaim in 
its favor, and bid " God speed" to this noble effort, in the name of 
the sovereign power of this nation ! Yes, sir, it is the people that 
must be sovereign in this land, and it is well known that as the 
sovereign is wise and just, the laws are good and wholesome. It is 
because this Institution is designed to enlighten and elevate the 
ruling power of the land, and diffuse happiness and justice, I again 
bid " God speed" to the College, and the liberal minds whose influ- 
ence and money are rearing its walls above the foundation, this day 
commenced. 

Bemark of ex- Gov. Clark. 

The People's College ; it is of the people, and for the people, and 
wlU be sustained by the people. 

Remarks of Hon. Horace Ch'eeley. 

So, in our enterprise of a People's College, there have been some 
who have done, as I trust many wiU do, nobly ; and I deprecate 
that spirit which would heap all the honor upon a single head. 
That honor, none would be more eager to disclaim than he who, in 
our case, is asked to bear it. He does not aspire to be sole foun- 
der and benefactor of the People's College ; there is enough here for 
many to do, and I for one claim the privilege of contributing my 
mite. "Were a thousand to help, there would be work enough, 
honor enough for all. But to one man is it pre-eminently due, that 
we are this day assembled to rejoice over the People's College as no 
longer a mere project, a thing of words, an unrealized idea — but an 
Institution which has a local habitation and a name, and something 
more than these. 
4 



50 

WLlle many desired, and expected, and hoped, one man stepped 
forward and said, " The People's College shall be ;" and it is. 
Enemies may say, that he had a personal end to gain ; I would that 
all men had personal ends that they pursued so worthily. Detract- 
ors may urge, that he sought through the College, to build up his 
favorite village ; I would that every wealthy man had a village that 
he would seek to build up by means like these. Let who will say, 
that this is a shrewd desire to achieve personal ends ; I answer that 
only a noble soul can perceive that personal ends can be wisely sub- 
served by such beneficent means. 

I ask your concurrence, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, in this 
sentiment : 

Chakles Cook — the man who believed, and dared, and did. 

Remarks of Hon. Henry Bradley, of Penn Yan. 

To-day, we inaugurate a new practice ; to-day, we enter upon a 
new era in the mechanic arts and in the agriculture of the country. 
From the People's College, young gentlemen farmers and mechan- 
ics will go forth with their literature and science, all over the land, 
shaping and moulding the handiwork of the honest people. Here, 
chemistry, electricity, and the analysis of soils will receive atten- 
tion, from which may flow incalculable benefits to the operatives of 
a world. 

The man who discerned the signs of the times ; who allowed the 
wants of the people to reach and control his inmost convictions ; 
who threw himself into circumstances of an increased responsibil- 
ity ; in short, the man who believed, and dared, and did, will be 
entitled to, and will receive from a grateful people, a brilliant page 
in his country's history. 

Remarks of Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, LL.D. 

Mr. President : If rightly conducted, the People's College will 
inaugurate a new era in moral and physical science, and will give 
firmness as well as harmony and beauty to the social structure : 
it will quicken the pulsations of society, and leap from the old 
cumbrous system which has ministered only to the few, to a sys- 
tem which will, in its fertilizing influences, cheer and bless the 
many ; which will give us " men, high-minded men — men, who 



51 

their duties know, and knowing, dare maintain" — not mere reeds, 
which quiver before any passing breeze ; but live oaks, of giant 
heart, which stretch out their defiant arms, and sink their roots so 
firm and deep in the soil, that they can withstand even the fury of 
the thunder-gust ; men who are strong, not only in learning, but in 
virtuous individuality — filled with noble impulses, and moral dar- 
ing for their execution ; men, upon whose well-trained arm, every 
muscle will stand out like whip-cord — whose practised hand can 
do its perfect work in agriculture or the mechanic arts ; men who 
will be lights in the great cause of human progress, and will beckon 
others onward, until indolence, intemperance, and all other social 
vices shall be driven from the abodes of civilization — until virtue, 
knowledge, and industry shall prevail throughout our land — until 
the light reflected from a nation so replete with elements of good, 
shall shoot athwart every ocean, and inspire others and less favored 
lands to emulate our example — in the education of the masses — in 
the practice of virtuous industry, and in that spirit of liberty which 
shall elevate, emancipate, and bless the whole brotherhood of man. 

Remarlcs of Rev. Dr. Jackson, President of Hobari Free College. 

I need not forewarn you, Mr. President, and the worthy gentle- 
men associated with you, that you are undertaking a vast enter- 
prise. It will require unflagging energy and perseverence, given 
by the ripest wisdom, to win success. But you will, I doubt not, 
prove yourselves equal to every demand and every emergency. Let 
not clouds and darkness discourage you. If you are actuated by a 
high Christian purpose, and a true wisdom in adapting means to 
ends, the clouds will roll away, and the dawn of a brighter day will 
appear beyond. 

I am called on to speak for the Colleges of "Western New York. 
I would say, then, that these Colleges feel no jealousy towards the 
People's College. Its plans and aims are widely diflferent, and there 
need be no interference or invidious competition. The mass to be 
educated is vast enough to absorb the energies and occupy to the 
utmost the best appliances of all. The Colleges of ^^'cstcrn New 
York will rejoice to see the People's College achieving a great work 
in giving to the people of this State and of this country, a thorough, 
practical education. I say, then, to you, Mr. President, and to 



52 

your associates in this generous enterprise, the Colleges of Western 
New York bid the People's College a hearty " God speed." 

Remarhs of Rev. Dr. Gowles, President of Elmira Female College. 

We are here celebrating the birth of another young College, and 
we mingle our joyful congratulations over such a vigorous and 
promising addition to the great family of Colleges and Universities 
of our State. This one seems to begin its life with remarkable 
vigor— it is already very large of its age, and of great promise. 
Only three years ago, a sister College was admitted to the great 
family of literary institutions — the first of its sex recognized by the 
State : that was the Elmira Female College, over which I have 
the honor to preside. 

These two young Institutions, the People's College and the El- 
mira Female College, so near of an age, so near each other in 
locality, and having so many similar plans and principles, ought 
surely to cherish a special reciprocal intimacy, a truly fraternal and 
sisterly affection. The mission of both is almost a common one ; 
the one to educate the people, the other to educate ivives suitable 
for the people. There is so large a field for such institutions, they 
are as yet so few and so comparatively feeble, that it is preposter- 
ous to think of rivalry or jealousy. At least the supply of students 
ought to be sufficient to fill all that are now organized, and for one 
I shall most heartily rejoice to see the ample accommodations of 
the noble edifice of the People's College crowded with earnest 
students. 

EemarJcs of Eev. William H. Goodwin, D.D. 
But, sir, in responding to this professional compliment, I may 
not forget the delightful associations and import of this occasion. 

This assemblage of eminent men — jurists and journalists, State 
functionaries and eminent civilians, clergymen, mechanics, and 
farmers, all are here as by a common impulse. The corps of citizen 
soldiers parades in the sultry march, with the many thousand de- 
lighted citizens that crowd upon the scene. Sir, the interest of 
this occasion is deep and unmistakable. 

The great popular heart is stirred, for we have met to found a 
seat of learning for the masses, to lay the " Corner-stone " of the 
"People's College." 



53 

It is fitting, sir, that here, at the outlet of the mineral wealth of 
Northern Pennsylvania and Southern New York, amidst this 
charming diversity of natural scenery, this noble enterprise should 
fix its locality, and rear this massive and splendid monument to 
popular learning. 

It is a favorable indication, that with the rapid advances of our 
country in agriculture and commerce, there is happily a corre- 
sponding interest in the cause of popular education. If the mineral 
mountains of Northern Pennsylvania could pour through this 
valley their freiglit of golden ingots, such an influx of wealth 
would prove a bane rather than a blessing, if this, and the hundred 
seats of learning throughout our country, could not, by the power 
of cultivated mind, transform this vast accession of gain into the 
noble monuments of art and science. 

It is well, sir, that the solid men of our country are learning that 
generous alchemy which transmutes the material into the mental 
and precious — the gold " that perisheth " into the " enduring 
riches." 

I could pity that man who, at the close of a long and laborious 
life, could show no more laudable or enduring monument of even 
a successful enterprise, than the boundary of ample lands or a well- 
filled coffer ; but I could envy that man who, as the almoner of a 
noble generosity, largely gives to the " People's College." 

Citizens of New York, I should do equal injustice to your con- 
victions of right, and my own better impulses, if I did not, upon 
this occasion, say that to a generous citizen, in your midst to-day, 
you are especially indebted for the present success of this popular 
enterprise, and that, with the history and future success of the 
" People's College," the name of the Hon. Charles Cook must ever 
be nobly eminent. In conclusion, I do but express the prayer of 
the thousand hearts before me, when I say, " Heaven bless the 
People's College," and may it shed a mild and enduring glory upon 
the ages to come ! 

SemarJcs of William Smith, Esq., Editor of the Times, Oivego. 

Soon after the plan was devised, a meeting was held in Owego, 
and, with others, I was invited to address it. The speakers and 
hearers at that meeting had no hope that the plan of the Institu- 



54 

tion then explained, would be so soon realized ; had no idea that on 
the Second of September, 1858, the foundations of the building 
would actually be laid. The results of to-day have already far 
transcended our most sanguine expectations. 

But, sir, this Institution differs materially from other Colleges. 
It is an experiment, and one of vast magnitude and importance. 
Hitherto the student of Arts, Science, and Literature, neither shoved 
the plane, wielded the hammer, nor directed the chisel or file of the 
machinist. His hand was soft as that of the lady ; his mind was 
trained to explore the heights and depths of science ; but his muscles 
were untrained, and too often unstrung, by excess of mental labor. 
This Institution inaugurates a great and vital change. It wed^^ 
together the labor of mind and the labor of body. It contemplates 
the complete training, the perfect development, of the physical and 
intellectual man. 

In this Institution the student will not only read the lofty verse 
of Virgil's Greorgics, but will reduce his rules to practice while fol- 
lowing the " trailing-footed " oxen spoken of by Homer. The 
Differential and Integral Calculus will commingle with the ring of 
the anvil and the whirr of the machine-shop. The mechanic's toil 
will be diversified by the Histories of Tacitus or the eloquence of 
Cicero and Demosthenes. The elevation which mental training 
and intellectual power confer, will be somewhat lessened by being 
blended with the more common and ordinary industrial occupations 
of every-day life, while the physical man will be correspondingly 
elevated, refined, and ennobled. 

The People's College is then a great experiment, and to its com- 
plete realization and fruition, the rising generation of the people are 
now looking with anxious hopes. It will be difficult, perhaps im- 
possible, during the first years of its actual operation, to come up 
to the expectations of the masses ; but that it will be ultimately 
successful, and not only successful, but become the germ and type 
for other kindred institutions, reaching still farther and ascending 
still higher, it may be, than the People's College, few will question, 
and none can doubt. 



55 



RemarTcs of Prof. J. Allen, Principal of Alfred Academy. 

Mr. President : You and your co-laborera are doing a great 
and God-like work. If causing the sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sending the rain on the just and on the unjust, is a proof 
of the divine perfection of our Heavenly Father, I can but believe 
that we are imitating those divine perfections, when we cause the 
sun of science to rise on those groping in ignorance, and the bless- 
ings of knowledge to be showered on all who thirst for its blessings. 
Yes, Mr. President, in inaugurating to-day the People's College, 
may I not congratulate you at having not only inaugurated a be- 
neficent, a sublime, but even a divine idea % 

The people, in their earnest strivings to raise themselves up to a 
higher point of intelligence and usefulness — in their earnest long- 
ings after the light of science and the development of their latent, 
their slumbering power, are about to give expression and embodi- 
ment to these longings and strivings, in that splendid structure, the 
corner-stone of which has been so auspiciously laid to-day. That 
edifice, sir, if perfected, as begun, will be a People's College, well 
worthy of the people. It will be a most fit exponent of the on- 
ward and upward progress of humanity. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



From the Havana Journal, August 13, 1859. 
We have to-day to chronicle another anniversary meeting of the 
Trustees of the People's College. It was an occasion to which our 
citizens had looked forward with interest, and which passed oft' 
oreatly to their gratification. The day was warm, but pleasant, 
and the number of persons present was some two thousand five hun- 
dred a lar^e gathering for the season of the year in this communi- 
ty of farmers. We saw in the crowd the Hon. Thurlow Weed, 
of Albany, Prof. Hyde, of Cazenovia, Kev. Messrs. Kellogg and 
Hunt, with other persons of prominence. 



56 

We publish letters from G-ov. Morgan and Ex-Gov. Hunt, which, 
explain themselves, and account for their not being here, as was an- 
ticipated. 

The order of exercises for the day was as follows : A proces- 
sion was formed near the Court-house, under the direction of Col. 
E. C. Frost, at 11 o'clock a.m., which was escorted to the ground, 
just south of the College, by the Cook Guards, and at the step of 
music, well discoursed by the new, but, as we certainly think, 
promising Millport Band. 

Having reached the grounds selected for the public exercises of 
the day, the Hon. Charles Cook was, in the absence of the Chair- 
man of the Trustees, called to preside, which he did in his usual 
lurbane and felicitous way. The services opened by music from the 
Band ; then followed a fervent and very appropriate prayer utter- 
ed by the Rev. Mr. Hunt, of Ithaca ; then the eloquent, well-reason- 
ed and well-adapted address of the Eev. Dr. Asa D. Smith, of New 
York, which we hope to have the privilege of publishing in full, 
hereafter ; then some remarks from the President of the College, 
Rev. Dr. Brown. 

Dr. B. read the letters of Gov. Morgan and Ex-Gov. Hunt, 
and proceeded to say that within the past eleven months, about fifty 
men had been kept constantly at work on the College edifice, dur- 
ing seasons appropriate for it ; that nearly two millions of brick 
had been put into it, and that the money ah'eady expended on the 
work was little short of |30,000. 

He then said : It is sometimes asked, " Is the People's College 
needed ? Since we have such a multitude of good ^colleges, why 
build another "?" He acknowledged the pertinency of the question, 
but in reply to it, said : If we consider the threefold nature of edu- 
cation, which is, 1st, To enlarge and strengthen the powers of the 
mind ; 2d, To afford a knowledge of things as they are, and their 
dependence on each other, their laws of action, &c., and to devise 
means for subserving ends — as the constructing of a watch, to mark 
the hours of the day — the coining of words, and systematizing them 
to facilitate the intercommunication of thought ; and 3d, To give 
our other faculties ease and promptness to accomplish the purposes 
of the will ; as in training the hand to write, the foot to dance, and 
the judgment, and reason, and imagination, to work in some defi- 



57 

nite and prescribed way ; we should find a reason sufficient for the 
attempt to build the College. He said : Especially is this so, if we 
take into account our increased machine-power within the last cen- 
tury, and our improved methods of tilling the soil, and reflect that 
the chief object of erecting colleges has been to strengthen mind and 
give it judgment and skill in the use of language, leaving out of ac- 
count, very much, the other and more practical subjects refen-ed to. 

As another argument for his belief, Dr. B. said that thinking 
men all over the country have come to believe in the necessity of 
People's Colleges to train the mind and muscle to do useful things ; 
and he read extracts from four or five letters, out of the hundreds, 
he said, he had received, from poor young men from nearly every 
State in the Union, to show that this class of our fellow-citizens, 
for whom it is the first duty to provide, feel the necessity of a Peo- 
ple's College, and are anxious to enjoy its privileges. 

Jn answer to another question, " Can the College be built ?" Dr. 
B. said it was the remark of Napoleon I. on a certain trying occa- 
sion, that he did not know the word retreat ; and an individual 
among us, whom the Hon. Gerrit Smith had said to him looked 
like Napoleon, had put his hand to the plough, and would not look 
back. Other good men, here and elsewhere, he had reason to think, 
would come to his assistance. 

He asked, Cannot twenty thousand dollars be raised in this coun- 
ty, in the way before described by us for a Schuyler County Pro- 
fessorship ? and when an almost unanimous response " Yes," had 
been given to the question from the crowd, he replied, Let this be 
done, and the success of this enterprise is not doubtful. 

At three o'clock the large dining-hall of the Montour House was 
filled by those prepared to do justice to the excellent dinner of the 
worthy landlord, Joseph GUes, Esq. After dinner there was, for 
an hour and a half, the flow of reason and feast of thought, when 
things grave, witty, and instructive, were said by Dr. Smith, Rev. 
Messrs. Day, Kellogg, and Hunt, Prof. Hyde, Hon. Henry Bradley, 
and others. 



New York, August 6, 1859. 
My Dear Sir : On receiving your second letter, I resolved in my 
own mind, to attend your annual meeting, and have delayed a re- 



58 

ply, hoping I could be witli you. But on coming to this city to • 
day, I find several public matters requiring my attention, which, to 
my regret, will deprive me of the pleasure of being with you on 
the 10th inst. 

With much regard, yours, 

E. D. MORGAN. 
Mr. Amos Brown, President of People's College, Havana. 



LocKPORT, August 2, 1859. 

■ Dear Sir : I sincerely regret, that I am under paramount engage- 
ments which will prevent my attendance at the annual meeting of 
the Trustees of the People's College, on the 10th inst. But I can- 
not allow the occasion to pass without congratulating you on the 
progress which has been made towards establishing the Institution 
on a firm and durable basis. 

Thanks to your own enlightened munificence and the generous 
cooperation of liberal minds in other sections of the State, the 
People's College, so long considered a doubtful experiment, is now 
to be regarded as a real institution, assuming a visible form and 
grand proportions, and preparing to enter upon its noble career of 
utility and beneficence. 

It is truly an important addition to the educational system of our 
State. It opens a new and inviting avenue to the higher walks of 
science and learning,, and will afford the means of mental culture 
and development to hundreds of our young men, whom nature has 
endowed with intellect and genius, while withholding the advan- 
tages of fortune. I cannot but regard it as one of the most laudable 
and judicious efi'orts of the day, for the difinsion of knowledge, 
and the improvement of the rising generation. The appeals which 
you propose to make to the community for aid and support, can 
scarcely fail to call forth a generous response. It would be impos- 
sible to present an object more worthy of public favor. I intend 
to visit the College as soon as my engagements will permit, and in 
the mean time, would request you to assure the Trustees of my 
sincere and unabated interest in the undertaking, which owes so 
much to their zealous and disinterested labors. 

With great regard, I remain yours, truly, 

WASHINGTON HUNT. 

Hon. Charles Cook, Havana. 



59 

Ithaca, N. Y., August 8, 1859, 
Rev. Amos Brown, President, &c. : 

Dear Sir : I liave the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your 
kind invitation to be present at your annual College meeting, on 
the 10th iust. I regret the necessity of saying, in reply, tluat prior 
eno-agements deprive me of the pleasure of meeting with you and 
your many friends on that occasion. 

It affords me great pleasure to learn that the great cause of edu- 
cation is progressing, and that the prospective prosperity of your 
Institution is so full of promise. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

J. B. WILLIAMS. 



Aurora, Aug. 8, 1859. 
My Dear Sir : I have, until this morning, expected to be with 
you on the 10th inst., but have just received a dispatch from New 
York, informing me that I must be there on Wednesday. 

It is to me a matter of regret, that I cannot be with you and the 
many friends of the People's College, upon so interesting an occa- 
sion. 

Very truly, 

ED^\TN B. MORGAN. 
Hon. Charles Cook, Havana. 



J Ballston Spa, August 8, 1859. 

Dear Sir : I have received your note of July 30, soliciting my 
attendance at the annual meeting of the Trustees of the People's 
College, to be held at I^vana on the 10th inst. I have delayed 
answering until this tiiSI, hoping that I might be able to attend 
on the occasion, and th^eby gratify a design I have long cherished, 
of visiting an interesting section of the State I have never seen ; 
but my business is such that I shall be compelled to forego the 
anticipated pleasure. 

Thanking you for the honor conferred by the invitation, and 
wishing all success to the Institution over which you have been 
called to preside, I subscribe myself. 

Your obedient servant, 

GEO. G. SCOTT. 
Rev. Amos Brov^tn, LL.D. 



60 

Emhra, Aug. 10, 1859. 

Rev. Amos Browtst, Dear Sir : I much regret that the extra 
duties required of me in preparation for our " Diocesan Conven- 
tion," which is to be held here on Wednesday, prox., render it im- 
possible for me to act as Chaplain of the Board of Trustees to-day, 
at Havana. 

On first receiving notice of the public exercises proposed for to- 
day, in behalf of the People's College, I fully purposed to attend 
upon them, and now I feel the more disappointed, because I lose 
the honor of complying with your special invitation. 

I hope the friends of the People's College will never pray in 
vain for the blessing, of God or the favor of the people, and as one 
such friend, I pray for the heavenly and eartlily supports to your 

noble enterprise. 

Yours, very truly, 

A. HULL. 



Bath, Aug. 8, 1859. 
Rev. a. Browi^i, President, &c. — Dear Sir : I had intended 
to attend the meeting of the People's College, on the 10th inst., 
until to-day, when I am called to Buffalo on urgent business. 
In consequence, I shall not be there. Hoping a good attendance, 
with satisfactory results, 

I am, respectfully yours, 

CONSTANT COOK. 

Among the distinguished strangers who attended our celebra- 
tion, was Thurlow Weed, of the Albany Evening Journal. He and 
his daughter, and a lady friend of his daughter, arrived in town 
on Tuesday evening, and took rooms at the Montour House. 

His reception by our citizens and the people generally, was 
warm and cordial, and must have been gratifying to him. After 
the exercises at the stand were concluded, great numbers of ladies 
and gentlemen were introduced to him. The People's CoUege has 
his hearty approval. He was highly pleased with the College 
buildings, their location, and the variety of soil on the College farm, 
all of which he examined with much interest. Before leaving, he 
made himself a stockholder in the College. 



61 

Correspondence of the Albany Evening Journal. 

Seneca Lake — Hav^vna — People's College. — Though in 
early life a resident of "Western New York, I have been so long 
away, that I had almost lost the recollection of the abounding fer- 
tility of her fields, the rich verdure of her forests, and the brightness 
and beauty of her land and water scenery. But a hasty excursion 
has brought back both the recollection and the reality in all that 
is luxuriant or beautiful in harvests or scenery. 

Passing with railroad rapidity through the counties of Oneida, 
Onondaga, and Cayuga, where the husbandman was reaping the 
bountiful rewards of his industry, where every field drops its fat- 
ness, and where hiUs and vaUeys rejoice, we enjoyed, on a calm, 
clear afternoon, in a balmy, refreshing atmosphere, a run through 
the Seneca Lake, looking with intense and increasing admiration at 
the glorious landscape upon either side of it. We have seen some- 
thing of lakes and scenery in other countries, but here was the 
perfection, the poetry of both. Such harvests as the farmers of 
Ovid and Dresden, Hector and Starkey, are gathering, gladden all 
hearts. 

Our destination was Havana, a fresh, bright-looking village, 
through which a canal and railroad pass, and within which you 
see, in its edifices and institutions, the workings and impress of some 
master-mind. Twenty-nine years ago, Charles Cook came here as 
a contractor upon the Chemung Canal, and, while completing 
his contract, purchased a large tract of land upon the spot where 
"Queen Catharine Montour" resided in 1780, and founded a vil- 
lage which is largely indebted to his intelligence, enterprise, and 
munificence, for its growth and prosperity. He erected large stores 
and store-houses, a spacious building for the manufacture of agricul- 
tural implements, a planing-machine mill, a splendid hotel (the Mon- 
tour House), a church which would grace any city in the Union ; 
and finally, with the assistance of friends there and elsewhere, he 
is erecting a People's College, that is destined to confer the advan- 
tages of education upon generations of youth, who wUl rise up 
to reward their benefactors by lives of usefulness. 

The People's College is a stately edifice, the exterior of which is 
nearly completed. It is surrounded by a large and fertile farm, 
upon whose broad acres students are to divide and diversify their 
time and labors between intellectual and agricultural pursuits. 



62 

There was a meeting of Trustees on Wednesday, and the citizens 
of the adjacent towns availed themselves of the occasion to visit the 
Institution. A procession formed in the village, and was escorted 
by a military company and brass band, to a grove in the rear of 
the College, where a most enlightened, interesting, practical, and 
eloquent address was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Smith, of New 
York. Rarely indeed have we enjoyed a richer intellectual repast. 
This was followed by a few energetic remarks from the Rev. Dr. 
Brown, the very able head of the College. 

This People's College, of which I had heard much and thought 
but little, is to be emphatically, what its name imports. Complet- 
ed and endowed, as I am confident it will be, thousands of young 
men, Avith bright intellects, who now struggle and sigh, in vain, for 
a liberal education, will find the doors of Learning and Science 
open. 

In the People's College at Havana, the State is to have an Insti- 
tution, worthy of public and private endowment and munificence. 

THURLOW WEED. 



A kite?' from Governor King. 

Albany, Aug. 30th, 1858. 
Dear Sir : Yours of the 26th inst. was received Saturday, on 
my return from Trenton Falls. I can only express my sincere re- 
gret that my sense of duty to the constituted authorities of the 
capital of the State, and in contemplation of the great event of the 
age, should have intervened between my promise to you and its 
performance. And I freely admit that I stand in need of your in- 
dulgence to make my excuse valid, and I trust acceptable. The 
sentiment prepared for the entertainment at your celebration, adds 
to my embarrassment on this occasion. And I am free to say that, 
while it is very pleasing to have agreeable things said of me, I am 
the more bound to you for the friendship and regard which it indi- 
cates on your part. The ceremonies here on the 1st inst., continue 
until late in the evening, and if I could leave at 6 p.m., to be on 
the cars all night would unfit me for the next day's work. If you 
will permit me, I will return a sentiment for the occasion, which I 
trust will be agreeable to you. " The People's College, founded 



63 

and endowed by a private citizen : may his liberality and public 
spirit receive a fitting response from the farmers of New York." 
With sincere regard, I remain truly yours, 

JOHN A. KING. 
Charles Cook. 



Letter from the Right Ra\ Bishop De Lancey, D.D., LL.D. 

Geneva, Sept. 1, 1858. 
Reverend and Dear Sir: Please to accept my thanks for your 
polite invitation to the laying of the corner-stone of the People's 
College, and to the dinner, and my regrets at not being able to at- 
tend, and believe me to be. 

Faithfully, your friend and servant, 

W. H. DELANCEY. 
Kev. Dr. Brown, Havana. 



A letter from the Hon. William Kelly. 

Ellersbe, RniNEBECK, 9th Aug., 1858. 

Dear Sir : I acknowledge with thanks your polite invitation 
to be present at Havana on the interesting occasion of laying the 
comer-stone of the People's College, an event which must give 
pleasure to every friend of practical education in the State, and ujjon 
which you have my cordial congratulations. 

If my engagements will at all permit it, I wiU be with you. 
With much respect, I am your obedient servant, 

WILLIAM KELLY. 
Rev. A. Broavn, President. 



From tlie Corning Journal, Aiigust 25th, 1859. 

People's College. — We copy from the Havana Journal an ac- 
count of the recent annual meeting of the Trustees. It was omit- 
ted last week for want of space. It is gratifying to leani that the 
meeting was largely attended, and that a general interest has been 
awakened in behalf of this College. This was shown by the letters 
(which were published in the Journal) from various distinguished 
men, and from the addresses at the meeting referred to. The muniii- 



028 356 874 P< 

64 

cence of Hon. Charj.es Cook secured the location of the building 
at Havana, and there is no reason to doubt of the early completion 
of the building, and the establishment of the People's College upon a 
permanent basis. Mr. Cook has enlisted in the work with his usual 
remarkable energy and perseverence, and to his influence and his 
ample fortune, the ultimate success of the enterprise must be largely 
due. 

In thus linking his name with the early struggles of an Institu- 
tion designed to accomplish great results to the cause of education 
in our land, Mr. C. is building an enduring monument. This Col- 
lege is the pioneer of institutions of learning for the people. Thus 
far in the history of the world the advantages of a liberal education 
have been mainly enjoyed by the sons of the wealthy, or those sus- 
tained by charitable funds. Others were obliged to make heroic 
sacrifices, or spend long years in labor to acquire the means to de- 
fray the expenses. Where an ardent desire for knowledge has 
prompted to intense exertion to keep up with the class through the 
year (while engaged half of the time in labor or teaching school), 
the graduate left the walls of his College with a ruined constitution, 
to find an early grave, or drag out an existence in suffering. But 
aside from this, the course of study is of little or no service in fitting 
men for the practical duties of life. The knowledge there acquired 
is of little avail, beyond the sphere of the professions. The People's 
College is designed for the masses of society. It is a realization of 
true democracy. The aim of its founders is to afford ample 
opportunities for acquiring such knowledge as will best enable men 
to become useful members of society, to educate the active, earnest 
young men of the country for the more important duties of common 
life. Thus, by enlarging greatly the field of knowledge, and ren- 
dering it accessible, an impulse will be given to the cause of educa- 
tion which shall elevate the standard among the people, and bless 
the world by yearly adding to the numbers of " educated men," 
those who are truly possessed of the advantages of a liberal educa- 
tion, and competent to fiU with honor and usefulness any station in 
civil life. 



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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



028 356 874 fl 



